Preamble

The House met at Eleven o'clock

PRAYERS

Orders of the Day — TEACHERS' SUPERANNUATION BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

11.6 a.m.

The Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Anthony Crosland): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Perhaps I may ask for the indulgence of the House at this point, because the United States Commissioner for Education is in London today for only a single day and it seemed discourteous not to see him at all. I therefore beg the leave of the House if I excuse myself shortly after the completion of my speech.
I make no apology for asking the House to devote a little time to considering improvements in the conditions of service of the teaching profession. We all recognise the central place that the teacher holds in our society and in our national plans for improving the health, wealth and happiness of our people. Within the limits set by economic circumstances, we all want to do what we can to ensure a contented and adequate body of teachers. This Measure is a modest, but, I hope, significant step in that direction.
The Bill has two main objects. First, it reforms the legislation concerned with teachers' superannuation, which at present is in a highly unsatisfactory state, and, secondly, it provides enabling powers for the introduction of schemes of family pension benefits for teachers—that is, pensions for their widows, widowers, children and other dependants. I will deal with the first point first.
All superannuation schemes are inclined to be complex, but in teachers' superannuation for many years we have had the added difficulty that the scheme is contained in a complex and heavily amended series of statutory provisions. There are

about 10 Statutes and nearly 100 Statutory Instruments covering teachers' superannuation schemes, and it would be next to impossible, as I know to my cost, for a layman to ascertain, still more to understand, the existing law.
The remedy that we propose in the Bill is to put the majority of statutory provisions now in force into a comprehensive set of superannuation regulations, so that the scheme can be comprised within a few documents which can be regularly consolidated and brought up to date. Apart from tidying up the law, this change will mean greater flexibility in dealing with all the complicated matters which have to be contained in teachers' superannuation legislation. In these days of rapid social change and pressure on Parliamentary time, it is no longer appropriate for so many details of legislation to be subject to the full procedure of an Act of Parliament; indeed, apart from the Civil Service, teachers' superannuation is the only public service pension scheme which is not now mainly on a regulation basis. The Scottish teachers, for example, have had their superannuation scheme largely in regulations for many years past.
Hon. Members will agree that we must strike a balance between freedom to make minor changes by means of Statutory Instruments and the complete withdrawal of the main provisions of the scheme from the full Parliamentary scrutiny provided by the different stages of a Bill. I hope they will agree that the proposals in this Bill strike the right balance. We propose to leave in the form of statutory enactments all the existing provisions which deal with the financial basis of the teachers' superannuation scheme—that is the rate of contributions, the arrangements for actuarial valuations, and the means of meeting deficits.
At the same time, the level of the main benefits which teachers will receive in return for their contributions is laid down in this Bill in some detail. This will reassure all the parties concerned that the basic arrangements cannot be changed without full consideration in Parliament. At the same time, the superannuation regulations for which the Bill provides must be the subject of consultation with teachers and local education authorities and will be subject to annulment by


Parliament in the usual way. The associations representing teachers and local authorities have been consulted about these proposals, which have commanded a wide measure of agreement.
The Government are committed to reforming the law, and hon. Members will recall the Law Commissions which have been set up for this purpose. The proposals in the Bill which I have just described have a similar objective. As the White Paper on these Law Commissions pointed out, one of the hallmarks of an advanced society is that its laws should not only be just but should be kept up to date and should be readily accessible to all affected. I think we can claim that the Bill is a useful step in that direction.
The second object of the Bill is to provide a scheme of family benefits for teachers in England and Wales. Hon. Members will recall that I told the House on 13th July that, following widespread consultation, it was clear that the great majority of teachers and their employers were in favour of implementing the scheme proposed in the report of an official working party, to which I will refer again in due course. I said that I should take the earliest opportunity of introducing legislation, and we have introduced this Bill as early as we could in this new Session to redeem this pledge.
I am sure the whole House will be glad that we can now at last provide a scheme of pension benefits for widows and dependants of teachers, and I know that the House will facilitate a speedy passage for the Bill so that the scheme can be introduced as quickly as possible. The inauguration of the scheme involves considerable administrative complexity, but if the Bill were to be passed before Christmas we hope to introduce the scheme from 1st April, and, moreover, Clause 3 will enable us to pay pensions to the widows of teachers who die in service after the Bill receives the Royal Assent but before the regulations come into force—a distinct element of retrospection.
The report of the working party dealt with teachers in England and Wales. I emphasise this, because Scottish teachers, who are, of course, the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, already have a similar scheme which began to operate last April.

Teachers are, in fact, the last body of public servants to be granted a widows' pension scheme.
The reason for this has been a prolonged disagreement—which the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hands-worth (Sir E. Boyle) will know of—about how the costs of a scheme should be met. I shall say a few words about this in a moment, but, behind all the negotiations and prolonged disagreements about cost, we are all aware that teachers die every day of the week and often leave their widows quite inadequately provided for. We receive some extremely sad letters in my Department, as the right hon. Gentleman will know, and I am sure the House will welcome these proposals which are designed to cure this long-standing deficiency.
I will now say a few words about the history of the negotiations on teachers' widows and dependants' pensions. There has been provision for such a scheme on the Statute Book ever since the Teachers (Superannuation) Act of 1956. This Act contained a Section empowering the Minister of Education to provide a scheme similar to those which already applied to employees in the National Health Service and in local government. These schemes are financed by means of deductions from the lump sum benefits payable on retirement or death under their main superannuation scheme.
Associations representing the majority of teachers, however, told the then Minister, Lord Eccles, in 1957 that they did not wish him to proceed with a scheme of this kind, and the Minister was not prepared to impose it. The teachers asked for a scheme like that applicable to civil servants, in which half the cost of widows' benefits is met by the Government as employer. Successive Governments have, however, been unwilling to accept this demand. They have regarded the Civil Service scheme as a special case, because it has always been non-contributory, and even the half cost of widows' pensions which civil servants were asked to bear involved contributions by employees for the first time. Successive Governments naturally considered the National Health Service scheme to be the proper precedent.
Moreover, the local authorities, who were concerned as employers of teachers, and who would normally have had to


share the cost of any subsidy to which the Government might agree, were also unwilling to accept the teachers' demand. They had reached agreement some years previously with the large body of their employees who are superannuated under the Local Government Superannuation Acts for a scheme financed entirely by deductions from main scheme benefits, and they were not prepared to take action which might call this agreement into question.
For many years, therefore, there was an impasse. But in 1962 a working party in Scotland suggested a new approach to the problem, namely, that the scheme should be financed, not by deductions from main scheme benefits, but by annual contributions from the teachers. This would have the advantage not only of avoiding reduction in main scheme lump sum benefits, to which the teachers attach a particular value, but of attracting concessions available for annual contributions under the Income Tax Acts. As I have said, a scheme on these lines has been in operation in Scotland since April, 1965.
Meanwhile, the English teachers had been considering the Scottish proposals. A working party consisting of representatives of the teachers' associations, the local authority associations and the Government produced last February a report which outlined without commitment a detailed scheme on the lines of the Scottish proposals. This was considered by all the associations concerned; and, with the single exception of the National Association of Schoolmasters, they asked me to introduce a scheme on these lines.
I am sorry, naturally, that we could not reach complete unanimity. But it was clear from my consultations during the spring and summer that the great majority of men teachers and their employers wished to see such a scheme put into operation as soon as possible. I hope the House will agree, therefore, that I was justified in going ahead. Indeed, I think it would have been quite wrong in the circumstances to deny this benefit to teachers any longer.
I am aware that there are two respects in which this scheme does not fully meet the teachers' objectives. In the first place, the teachers' associations—the

National Union of Teachers and other bodies—have never gone back on their declared preference for a scheme in which the cost is shared by the Government and L.E.A.S. I have already indicated some of the objections to this course. But I must point out that, although the scheme proposed is not technically a shared-cost scheme, since neither Government nor local authorities will actually contribute to the teachers' widows pension fund, the teachers, or at any rate the younger ones, will in fact receive almost as good terms as civil servants.
Their contributions of 2 per cent. per annum will, in effect, be reduced through Income Tax relief to about 1·4 per cent., compared with 1¼ per cent. payable by civil servants; for civil servants, tax relief for this purpose is specifically denied. Moreover, some of the benefits in the teachers' schemes—

Sir Edward Boyle: Is the 1·4 per cent. figure an average figure for all teachers? I think I am right in saying that in the White Paper on this scheme the figures are set out for men earning not more than £1,000 a year and so on and those earning between £1,000 and £2,000 a year. I wondered whether the figure was an average figure for the profession as a whole. It would be useful to be clear on that point.

Mr. Crosland: I am almost certain that it is an average figure, but I will have the point checked and my hon. Friend the Minister of State will confirm this when he replies to the debate.
As I was saying, some of the benefits in the teachers' schemes are better than those available to civil servants; and the Government and local authorities will, as the House will see from the Bill, in fact, be making a significant contribution by bearing the costs of administration, which are heavier in a complex scheme of this type than they would have been for the simpler scheme suggested in 1956.
Apart from this general desire for a shared-cost scheme, I know that the teachers' associations were particularly anxious that some help should be given to their older members, and they suggested that if the Government could not share the cost on a permanent basis, they might at least provide a "once for all"


subsidy for teachers over, say, 45 or 50 years of age. Representatives of the N.U.T. came to see me and pressed this point most strongly; and it was a main factor in the rejection of the scheme by the N.A.S.
This suggestion of a subsidy for older teachers was, in fact, considered fully and sympathetically by my predecessor, but he came to the conclusion that he must reject it for good reasons which I fully support and which are, in fact, set out in the working party's report. In the first place, the scheme was mainly devised for younger teachers; it was inevitable that the cost would fall more heavily on teachers who had made no payments until the end of their careers.
Moreover, the capital cost of a subsidy would be, at the most modest estimate, several million pounds, and it would be payable only to teachers in certain age groups, that is, those over 45 or 50 and not retired. The final consideration was that teachers who had made already private arrangements to provide for their wives might not be able to afford additional contributions under the new scheme, even to attract the Government subsidy, and thus it would, in a sense, have helped the improvident rather than the provident.
Taking all this into account, my predecessor felt—as I do—that, with the many options available to them, the position of teachers due to retire within the next few years was not unfavourable, and he did not see—and I do not see—how the Government can justify singling them out for exceptional treatment. The Secretary of State for Scotland shares this view, and the Scottish scheme is in operation on this basis.
I now turn to the individual clauses in the Bill, which Members will see is, fortunately, a comparatively short one. Clause 1 authorises me to make a comprehensive set of superannuation regulations which will supersede all existing legislation except that relating to the basic financial provisions which are to be reserved in the way I have described. We shall, of course, include in the superannuation regulations all the existing provisions in the scheme except for a few points which it may be desired to vary or omit after consultation with the teachers and local education authorities.
Clause 2 deals with the effect on the old law of the change to the new legislative basis. Neither Clause will immediately affect existing legislation, but as soon as the Bill is passed we shall begin to prepare the superannuation regulations. This is bound to take some time and we shall, of course, consult all the associations which may be affected, as provided for in Clause 1. It will, therefore, be several months at least before the new regulations can be established.
The regulations will prescribe an appointed day on which they will come into force with the consequences indicated in Clause 2. They will supersede all the existing legislation, with the exception of the reserved points. When the new arrangements are fully in operation the teachers' superannuation scheme will, by and large, be contained in a single set of superannuation regulations. Apart from these there will be only a few Statutory Instruments dealing with certain extraneous matters, together with this Bill, and the few portions of the existing statutes that will remain unrepealed; and these enactments we hope to be able to consolidate soon after the regulations are made.
Clause 3—and this is the second objective of the Bill—provides enabling powers for a separate set of regulations providing for the payment of pensions to widows and other dependants of teachers. The schemes will be financed by contributions paid by the teachers, mostly by deduction from salary, but in some cases by surrender of lump sum benefits payable under the main scheme. These contributions will be paid into a fund which will be managed by a board of management on which teachers will have a majority. The fund will be invested and valued by the Government Actuary in the usual way. If, as we hope, he advises in due course that there is a surplus, we may be able to improve the benefits or reduce the contributions.
Clause 4 makes additional new arrangements for teachers who maintain membership of the teachers' superannuation scheme by paying contributions while their ordinary service is discontinued— usually while teaching overseas. At present their contributions are based on the salary for their last service in this country. If they do not return to ordinary service owing to death, breakdown or


retirement their benefits have to be similarly based. This, with rising salaries at home, can be severely detrimental. The Clause remedies this by providing, with immediate effect, that both contributions and benefits should be based on the salary the teacher would have received had he continued in his former employment.
The new arrangement has been recommended by the National Council on the Supply of Teachers' Overseas, on which both teachers and local authority are represented. It has been strongly urged on me by the Minister of Overseas Development and bodies concerned with recruitment of teachers for overseas posts, because the present arrangements inhibit the recruitment of experienced teachers approaching retirement. Hon. Members will be aware that, in spite of the shortage of teachers in this country, it is the Government's policy to promote the employment of British teachers in developing countries overseas, and I am happy to be able to propose a new provision which will assist in this way.
Clause 5 re-enacts an existing provision about the obtaining of superannuation benefits by fraud. I am happy to say that this provision is used rarely, but it has been included in the Bill because the subject matter is not suitable for regulations. The Clause will come into force on the passing of the Bill.
The remaining Clauses are merely formal and deal with such matters as finance, interpretation and repeals. As one might expect in a Measure of this kind, the Bill contains some fairly lengthy Schedules. I need hardly say anything about Schedules 2 and 3, which relate to the amendment and repeal of existing enactments, but I should say a few words about Schedule I, which deals with the superannuation regulations.
Part I of the Schedule lists the provisions which I am bound to include. These, in fact, are the provisions about benefits of which, as I have explained, we feel the teachers ought to have some guarantee in the statute. It lays down in detail how the main benefits, the pensions payable on age or infirmity grounds, should be calculated, and reproduces the provisions at present incorporated in the 1956 Act.
Superannuation Acts and regulations tend to seem very tedious, technical and dry as dust matters, holding very little interest except to those immediately affected. But to those concerned with its administration, a superannuation scheme is a very human matter concerned with issues of life and death, of breakdown in health and of ordinary age retirement which can, to many, be a profound emotional experience. The Department's superannuation files contain many moving human stories, many of them sad—the letters from a woman who is suddenly widowed, or a teacher faced with a breakdown in health and loss of earning power —but others joyous, such as the honoured retirement of a teacher who has given long and faithful service to his local community. I am happy to be able to introduce a Measure which will make a significant improvement in the superannuation arrangements for teachers, and I commend it to the House.

11.26 a.m.

Sir Edward Boyle: My hon. Friends and I unreservedly welcome the Bill and will co-operate fully in seeing that it has as speedy as possible a passage through the House. I, too, would like to apologise for the fact that it will be difficult for me to stay through the whole of the debate, and, therefore, at the outset I prospectively welcome the new Minister of State to our debates. There has been a change-over of functions within the Department. I recall paying on behalf of this side of the House a sincere tribute to the other Minister of State when we last debated education—between 3 and 5 o'clock in the morning just before the Recess—and I am sure that all my hon. Friends will wish warmly to welcome the new Minister of State to these debates.
The Bill is, I agree, the sort of measure which may not attract as much attention in the Press and outside as a number of other measures in the Gracious Speech. Nevertheless, it is one of very real importance in human terms, and I endorse what the Secretary of State said on this score.
Looking back to nearly three years as Parliamentary Secretary and again to two years as Minister, I think that I answered more letters from hon. Members on superannuation matters than on any other subject. We should not be in any doubt about the importance of this subject to


teachers—not only to those in distressing circumstances but to all teachers who have retired; one might say to all public servants in this country. The Minister will no doubt agree that this is particularly true at a time of rapid economic growth and when general living standards improve. Superannuation matters are of particular importance to people who give a lifetime of service in a profession, particularly when that profession is of vital importance to the community.
The Bill has two main purposes, although I will also comment on Clause 4, which is also of considerable importance. The opening Clauses simplify the administration of the teachers' superannuation scheme and make the law on teachers' superannuation easier to understand. These Clauses combine 10 existing Statutes and 100 Statutory Instruments in the One set of regulations. I will not comment on these provisions at length, except to say that I agree with the right hon. Gentleman about the importance of seeing that our laws are not only just but up to date. In any rapidly changing society there will always be a great deal of need for legislation which, as it were, brings the law into consonance with reality and brings it together so that it can be more easily understood.
The most important part of the Bill is that contained in Clause 3, where the Measure provides for the establishment of an agreed scheme of pensions for teachers' widows and dependants. There will be general agreement that the absence of a suitable provision for teachers' dependants has been a serious gap in the conditions of service of a profession of such great importance to the community. Perhaps this is all the more important now that we have had equal pay for a number of years. I have always thought that following the introduction of equal pay it was of particular importance to try to get agreement on some scheme for providing for teachers' dependants. As the right hon. Gentleman said, for many years now teachers have been asking for a widows' pension scheme which should be a shared-cost scheme. I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman emphasised that the difficulties of such a scheme have always been stressed, not only by the Government but also by the local authorities. This was not a matter

on which it was possible to get agreement among the educational partners. It is because of this that, after 1957, the subject was, as it were, in suspense for a number of years.
In July, 1962 we had the Report of the Working Party on pensions for widows and other dependants of teachers in Scotland. The Report was published just after I became Minister, and it was felt in the Ministry that this really suggested an entirely new approach to the problem of financing widows' pensions; the approach which suggested that financing should be based, not on deductions from the benefits payable under the main superannuation scheme but on additional annual contributions which would attract tax relief.
Following publication of the Scottish Working Party's Report, representatives of the teachers' associations in England and Wales sought a meeting with me to discuss the question of pensions for teachers' widows in England and Wales. On that occasion I reaffirmed the difficulty of the shared-cost scheme, but suggested that perhaps progress could be made on the lines of the Scottish Report. I did not commit the Government in detail at that time, but I did, as it were, urge that a feasibility study should be made. The local authority and teacher associations set up a working party which, in July 1963, proposed as a basis for discussion a scheme broadly similar to that suggested by the Scottish Working Party. They asked me, as Minister at that time, to appoint an official working party comprising representatives of the Department, the Government Actuary's Department, local authority associations and teachers organisations to prepare a detailed scheme which should include elements based on the proposals in the Scottish Report.
Hon. Members may recall that during the debate on the Remuneration of Teachers Bill in 1963 I gave a hint that I thought at that the time had come to make progress on this subject, and I remember the keen ear of the present Patronage Secretary detected the inwardness of what I was saying; he said that he thought it the most useful contribution I had made to the debates on that particular Bill. There was then a sense that the time had come for a forward move on this front.
It was in March last year that I announced the appointment of an official Working Party to prepare a scheme, and the working party published its report in February of last year. Like the right hon. Gentleman, I wish that this could have been a unanimous report; I regret that the teachers associations were not absolutely unanimous on the subject. Nonetheless, bearing in mind the back history of the matter and the fact that there was so much agreement, the right hon. Gentleman has been abundantly right to take action at once, and to introduce legislation at the very start of this Session.
I would emphasise that although this is not to be a shared-cost scheme, the terms of the proposals in the working party's scheme compare not too badly with the Civil Service scheme. The right hon. Gentleman is also right in pointing out that the Government will be very much concerned in the matter. The Bill provides that a fund should be established into which all contributions should be brought and from which widows' and dependants' pensions should be paid. The fund will be managed by a board of management set up by the Secretary of State. The only direct cost to the Exchequer will be the cost of administration. There will also be administrative expenses incurred by local education authorities which will be met out of general grant.
None the less, I stress that, as the right hon. Gentleman has said, with the Income Tax reliefs this will not be too bad a scheme. Above all, for the first time, as I understand it, the Department of Education will be thoroughly involved in this matter—it will be concerned with the administration and will answer hon. Members' letters and Questions on the subject. It is a new departure, and a new addition to the range of matters of which the Department of Education will be taking cognisance. In that sense, also, this is a really important Bill from the point of view of the teaching profession.
I do not want to comment at length on the details of the scheme because to do so would not be appropriate in connection with what is virtually an enabling Measure. I entirely understand the reasons given by the right hon. Gentleman for its not being thought possible for the Government to give a subsidy, as it

were, to help the older teachers. Equally, perhaps we on this side would be rather more than human if we did not point out the contrast between what the right hon. Gentleman has just said and what the present Minister of Pensions said when the Scottish Bill was going through the Scottish Grand Committee a year or two ago.
In December, 1962, the right hon. Lady said:
The Secretary of State ought to consider very carefully the position of the older teacher. …He should ensure that the cost in respect of past service by teachers is borne by the Chancellor."—[OFFICIAL REPORT.]
The right hon. Lady, referring to the fact that the details should be set out in regulations and not in a Bill, said:
Such scurvy treatment will certainly not help to raise the status of the teachers, nor help to recruit those we so desperately need." —[OFFICIAL REPORT, Scottish Grand Committee, 11th December, 1962; c. 18–19.]
Incidentally, I noticed that the right hon. Lady put in a very brief appearance this morning at the start of this debate. She may now feel that her language on the earlier occasion was just a little exaggerated, and anyway I am glad that we have this Bill, and I am sure that its form is entirely reasonable.
Before I come to Clause 4, I hope that I shall not be trespassing on the indulgence of the House, and that I shall not be out of order, if I refer to one matter, not in the Bill, which is very relevant to the whole question of teachers' superannuation. I hope that before the end of the debate the Minister of State will be able to say something on how the official Working Party is getting on exploring the issue of a superannuation scheme for part-time teachers.
When the Secretary of State made his speech at the Isle of Man conference, outlining his 14-point action programme, he very rightly said:
We shall not get the married women back unless we provide enough opportunities for part-time teaching. We already owe more than most people realise to part-timers. Last year, they represented, in terms of their full-time equivalent, nearly one half of the year's net increase in the teaching force. But we can and must do still more. The question is: How?
We must get their pay and pensions right— and this is my point No. 7. We can extend to part-timers the pension rights that full-time teachers already possess. With the support of the teacher and local authority associations I am setting up an official working party to explore how best and how quickly we can do this.


I regard this as a matter of real urgency and importance, and we should be wrong, as a House, to grant a Second Reading to a Bill on teachers' superannuation without asking from the Government some statement on how this matter is going. Everyone here knows that the problem of teacher shortage today remains the No. 1 educational problem, and it is our No. 1 priority to cope with it.
I take the opportunity to say that during recent years the colleges of education have been increasing more rapidly than any part of our system of higher education. The colleges have made a magnificent achievement in admitting 29,000 students this autumn. In terms of input into the profession the colleges are doing magnificently, and it is true to say that successive Governments in recent years have given this aspect of education a very high priority. But the great problem is that of wastage—of rapid outflow from the profession. This pinpoints the very great importance of getting back married women returners when their family commitments permit. This, in turn, emphasises the great importance of working out a superannuation scheme for part-timers.
I venture to comment, though I may be wrong, that I have always thought that such a scheme for teachers who are less than half-time would be very difficult to work out. Equally, I have for a very long time believed that a superannuation scheme for half-timers or more should be practicable. In view of the great importance of teacher supply—I merely instance in passing the present difficulties in Birmingham—I hope that the Minister of State will be able to tell us how the Working Party is progressing.
Lastly I take up what the right hon. Gentleman said on the subject of Clause 4. On these occasions we all approach "Clause 4" with a certain gingerliness. I expect the right hon. Gentleman feels the same when he finds himself using those words. Nevertheless, Clause 4 in this Bill I think a thoroughly valuable Clause. I say this as one who last year had the privilege of leading the United Kingdom delegation to the Commonwealth Educational Conference at Ottawa. Since then I have had the opportunity of travelling in India last Christmas, and of visiting

Zambia and Kenya this summer, and I know how vital a matter is the provision of specialist manpower, of teachers not least.
If one considers Zambia today one is sorely tempted to draw a contrast with what is happening there as compared with Rhodesia next door. In Zambia the story is a very happy one of 120 new secondary school classes this year, another 120 next year and 120 in the year after that. There is a tremendous rate of expansion going on. This means that the provision of technical manpower of all kinds is of high importance, especially for teachers who can be seconded. I pinpoint especially what I call the seeds of seed corn, those who can help to lay the foundations of a more expanded system of teacher-training for the future. I hope that in this context Clause 4 will be of value. I do not think the House should be in any doubt as to the high importance of this form of technical assistance among the many aspects of aid with which we concern ourselves.
I hope I have not trespassed beyond what is proper on these occasions. I repeat that we on this side of the House give a warm welcome to this Bill, which deals with a subject with which we ourselves were very much concerned when in office. The initiatives in 1963 and 1964 have borne fruit in a Measure which represents a real step forward. We should do all we can to speed the passage of this Bill through the House.

11.42 a.m.

Mr. Stan Newens: I am sure the Bill will be welcomed in all parts of the House. I congratulate the Government on finding an opportunity so early in the Session to deal with a matter which has been of great concern to teachers over a long period of years. As my right hon. Friend said, this is a comprehensive Bill which relates to 10 Statutes and 100 Orders and will simplify the procedure for ascertaining teachers' entitlement to superannuation benefit, which I imagine will be welcomed by the Department of Education as well as among teachers' organisations.
Clause 4, to which the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle) referred, is extremely important. I suppose that the feature of greatest interest and greatest cheer for teachers


as a whole is that contained in Clause 3, namely, the scheme for pensions for teachers' widows, orphans and dependants. The idea of this scheme has been pressed for many years by teachers' organisations. As one who has been a serving teacher, I can say that it has excited a great deal of interest among present serving teachers. There is great credit due to the Government for introducing this scheme at this time. It is an illustration of the very considerable interest and concern which the Government have for education as a whole. I shall refer to proposals made on this scheme in the report of the Working Party in February, 1965. The Working Party was set up as a result of the initiative and following discussions on the part of the right hon. Member for Handsworth. The proposals contained in the scheme represent for the young teacher very good value for money. It is true that an extra 2 per cent. of a teacher's salary will be deducted to cover benefits and teachers generally would have been much happier if they had not to contribute 2 per cent. of their salaries for this purpose. Even taking that into account, the scheme represents a good bargain for young teachers.
As my right hon. Friend pointed out, the 2 per cent. qualifies for Income Tax relief and this will help to diminish the burden placed on a teacher's income. The scheme will certainly relieve the need for the young provident teacher to provide death benefit by entering some private scheme. If at present he enters a private scheme he will be obliged to pay a premium amounting certainly to 2 per cent. of his income, and probably considerably more.
The statutory scheme has an advantage over any private scheme. The benefit if eventually required by a teacher's dependants, his family or widow, may not be required particularly early. It may be required 20 or 30 years after orginal entry to the profession. The benefit then will be determined, not by the original contributions which the teacher made as a young man or woman, but by the average salary at the time of death. This is a benefit which no private scheme can equal.
I am quite sure, as a result of inquiries I have made, that most young teachers will welcome the opportunity of entering the scheme and qualifying for the benefits provided. For older teachers the scheme is not so attractive. As has been pointed out this morning, in order to qualify an older teacher must make a back payment of contributions. That back payment will represent a hefty outlay and will become greater the older the teacher becomes.
I have looked at some figures which deal with this aspect of the problem, and I understand that if a teacher aged 50 with 10 years of service left decides to enter the scheme he will be required to pay, in addition to his 6 per cent. And 2 per cent. of his income for current benefits, a further 7 per cent., making a total of 15 per cent. of his salary. If he wanted to qualify for the full benefits he would be obliged to pay 15 per cent. of his salary until retirement. This is a hefty contribution to ask any man or woman to make.
If a teacher were older than 50 with less service to fulfil he would not be permitted to pay a greater amount out from his current salary because, according to the scheme agreed by the working party, 7 per cent. would be the maximum he would be allowed to pay in addition to the 6 per cent. and 2 per cent. This would mean that a teacher of 59 years of age who wanted to enter the scheme would have to sacrifice two-thirds of the lump sum to which he is entitled on retirement. That is a great sacrifice to ask any teacher to make. The result would certainly be that many older teachers would not join the scheme.
I have discussed this matter with many older teachers and I have not yet met one who is enthusiastic about joining the scheme. Only last evening I was at a National Union of Teachers' function in my constituency, at Chingford. I took the opportunity of talking to a number of older teachers and I found that, while they all recognised the great benefits which will accrue to younger teachers, they thought the benefits were not sufficient to justify their joining the scheme themselves, particularly as the more provident of the older teachers in many cases have already made private arrangements.
Effectively, this scheme, if the older teachers do not join, will not cover the whole profession for many years. Most


widows are the widows of older teachers. Therefore, for a considerable number of years, unless the older teachers join, there will be a number of people who will not qualify for benefit.
It is true that the main teachers' organisations have come out in support of the scheme and will greatly welcome the Bill, despite the reservations which they have expressed. It is only fair to say that most of the teachers' organisations accepted the proposals relating to older teachers only because they felt that once again there might be non-agreement, as a result of which no scheme would be introduced. It was with this in view that the teachers' organisations for the most part came out in favour of the scheme.
I recognise that there are many difficulties involved in financing the buying of back service by older teachers. However, consideration should be given to the ideal solution of the Minister making a once and for all payment to help older teachers to buy their way into the scheme. If this is not possible, would it be possible to make some concession for older teachers, because unless this is done I repeat that many older teachers will not join? When eventually older teachers die, the upkeep of their widows and dependants will remain a charge on one sector of the public expenditure or another—either the National Assistance Board or some other body.
My right hon. Friend said that a Government subsidy to buy in the older teachers would provide for the improvident older teacher. I make the point to my right hon. Friend that somebody must provide for the dependants of the improvident teachers. We cannot leave them in a situation in which the sins of past omissions are visited on their heads when a tragedy has occurred. Teachers are entitled to be covered, because they are a very vital section of the working population. I therefore ask my right hon. Friend, despite the Working Party's report, and despite what he said this morning, to look again at this aspect of the problem, because if it were possible to make some concession we should win great approval from the whole profession and should do something of very great merit.
Despite the point I have raised about older teachers, I think that the scheme as a whole represents a great social advance.

No one knows the grief of losing a partner in life until it happens. Nobody knows the full impact of the tragedy of children left with only one parent. The addition of grinding penury to the unspeakable grief and loneliness of widowhood must be prevented at all costs.
It is in this spirit that I welcome the Bill. I am not merely concerned in the long run with teachers. I want to see all workers and all useful members of the community able to enjoy these benefits. I regard the scheme as a step forward which we hope that every member of the community will be entitled to ultimately. The Government deserve great credit for including these proposals in their present programme, particularly in view of the very difficult economic circumstances which we know the Government have had to face during the course of the last year. I do not want to make party political points on this occasion, but we can imagine circumstances in which a Government might have said that, because of the economic circumstances, it was impossible to introduce a scheme of this description, however much merit it might have had. Teachers everywhere will recognise the credit due to the Government for pushing aside any arguments of that type that might have been urged upon them and going ahead with this very good scheme.
However, I want to reiterate my plea to the Minister to review the position of older teachers. This scheme is a very great advance, but it could have been even better. It may be said that half a loaf is better than none, but a whole loaf is better still.
I recognise that the scheme will not bring about a tremendous rush of new applicants to enter the profession, but it will certainly help to improve the attractiveness of teaching, which one increasingly realises is a very vital sector of our economy in which the shortage is becoming ever more acute in some spheres. We shall be able to overcome the problem of teacher shortage only if we can improve the position of teachers. The advance which the Government propose this morning—another advance in the education sphere—is part of the policy which the Government promised before the election and are now loyally fulfilling of improving the position of teachers and placing much greater


emphasis on the importance of education in the community.
I hope that there will be a later opportunity to consider some of the aspects of the Bill which I have raised and also other aspects which I do not intend to deal with now. I hope that teachers themselves will study the proposals, which will be given a great deal of publicity as a result of this debate. I hope that teachers will recognise the great merits attached to the Bill, despite the fact that in certain respects it falls short of the ideal which some of us at any rate would wish it to attain.

11.58 a.m.

Mr. Gilbert Longden: I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to intervene for a very few moments in this debate, because it is now some ten years or so since I first began to take a marked interest in teachers' pensions and superannuation generally. In those days the then Government introduced a Measure which was unacceptable to the profession. I took up the cudgels on behalf of the profession, because I believed that it was an unfair Measure and did not conform with promises which had been made to the profession in the past. That Measure was withdrawn and another, which was accepted by the profession as a whole, was introduced; and as the Minister said this morning, this second Measure made provision for dependants' pensions. Unfortunately the profession has never been able to agree to operate those provisions. I therefore welcome this Bill very much, first, because, as the Minister has said, it consolidates many Measures, and secondly, because of Clause 4, which I have long advocated, for I believe that of all the aid to developing countries which we can give, none is more important and valuable than human technical aid, and Clause 4 will certainly help towards that end.
But, above all, I welcome the Bill because at long last it makes provision for teachers' dependants, and I congratulate the Minister on his good fortune in being in a position to be able to introduce it. I am glad that teachers as a whole have agreed to the terms of the Bill. I regret that the National Association of Schoolmasters, which represents a very substantial proportion of male opinion in the

profession, has not so far agreed, but I agree that the Minister was fully justified in going ahead even without that agreement.
There are one or two points that I should like to put to the Minister of State, whom I welcome to his new appointment. They concern anomalies, which will be well known to the Ministry. They adversely affect the return of teachers to the profession, which is of such vital importance to us today. The Minister of State will be aware of these anomalies, but I hoped the passage of this Bill might provide an opportunity to correct some of them. If a retired teacher returns to full-time teaching for even a single day he may have his pension deducted for that day and be out of pocket. If such a person returns to work in any other sphere, to any other job, or even to teaching in a non-State-aided school his pension is not affected.
On returning to part-time teaching a teacher may earn up to a maximum amount per quarter without affecting his or her pension, but the quarter is not a school quarter; it is a quarter which depends upon the teacher's birthday and so varies from teacher to teacher. The teacher is not allowed to average whatever he receives for part-time teaching over the whole year: so that in the winter months when the demand for part-timers is greatest it is sometimes necessary to employ two or three teachers for the same class, so that no one teacher shall exceed his permitted maximum.
Then there is the question of contributory service. Whereas full-time teaching —even supply work for one day a week— can count as contributory service, part-time teaching even up to 25 hours a week cannot. All these anomalies deter re-recruitment of married women whom we very much wish to draw back into the profession when, as my right hon. Friend rightly said—and I underline it— family commitments permit.
Then there is the minor anomaly of marking examination papers. It is minor but it is very ridiculous. If a teacher marks examination papers for an examination board which is not State-aided his pension is not reduced. Thus if he marks for the Northern University Joint Matriculation Board, which is not grant-aided, his pension is not affected. But if he


marks examination papers for a London University Board which is grant-aided, his pension is reduced. I would ask the Minister whether this and the other matters to which I have referred may be considered during the passage of this Bill to which I again offer a warm welcome.

12.5 p.m.

Mr. Eric Ogden: I should like to follow the example of the hon. Member for Hertfordshire, South-West (Mr. Longden) and keep my remarks to a basic minimum. I should, first, like to add my welcome to the Minister of State.
This is a very useful Bill, which I hope will be amongst the first to receive the Royal Assent this Session. Clauses 1 and 2, which are for simplification, codification and co-ordination, will perhaps be resisted by a few in the legal or accountancy professions. Clause 3 extends the scope of existing provisions, and it will receive wide support. Whilst Clause 5 may be necessary in law, I doubt whether it will be invoked, except rarely.
The Secretary of State said that the Bill would be of real assistance to those who retire after long and faithful service in the teaching profession. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle) spoke of the continuing need to bring legislation up to date, and this is very important. In spite of the general air of agreement and support, those who are concerned with education legislation are in the main little Olivers. No matter what is given, we always ask for more, and I think it is right that we should do so.
May I add my own small share of exhortation and advice, particularly as the right hon. Member for Handsworth was allowed to open the door in this direction by referring to something which is not in the Bill. There is an illusion that the teaching profession is divided into two main sex categories—men who enter for a full-time career, and women who enter the profession for a pre-marriage career. This is an illusion which is reflected in the provisions for superannuation benefits for the teaching profession. The proportion of women teachers who give a lifetime of service to teaching is greater than is normally supposed by the majority of people. Certainly we hear at times of those who join the profession, give two or

three years' service and then marry and leave, but this is counterbalanced by the large number of people—men and women —who give a lifetime of service.
While I would not disagree with the need for any of the Clauses in the Bill, particularly Clause 4, I believe there is a need for a Clause 3A and a Clause 10. There is a situation, which is not assisted by the Bill, though the hopes of many people were raised when they read the title of the Bill. I refer to the fact that the pension which a teacher receives in 1965 depends to a great extent on when he retired. A teacher who retired in 1939 needs the same amount of money for food, clothes and lighting as a teacher who retired in 1964. Yet the actual pensions in terms of hard cash are very different. I should like to know whether in this Bill or in future legislation such as has been forecast in the Queen's Speech some thought could be given to the amount of pension received by the teaching profession at this date, irrespective of the amount of money which was paid in. This may go some way towards solving the difficulties that many people experience.
This, however, in no way diminishes my welcome and support for the Bill, though I think my right hon. Friend would be a little disappointed if we did not ask for more than is actually contained in the Bill.

12.9 p.m.

Mr. Richard Hornby: I offer a brief but none the less warm welcome to the Bill.
There are, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle) said, two main grounds on which one bases that welcome. The first is that it is for the people affected a genuine social advance. It represents an improvement in their conditions of work. Secondly, it is an important factor in recruitment. I do not want to over-emphasise this point, for I think it is true to say that one should not necessarily imagine that the passage of this Bill will make a marked difference to the recruitment figures. Nevertheless, at any time such as now, when we are looking for 100,000 or more extra teachers, it is important that conditions of employment should be comparable with what is going on elsewhere.
In industry and many other fields terms of service in matters of pensions and coverage of dependants, and so on, are being improved all the time, and teaching has greater need to attract and hold its present proportion of people coming out of the universities, to hold on to the people coming out of colleges of education, and to hold within its ranks those who are already teaching but who may from time to time in periods of shortage of skilled people be tempted to go elsewhere. It is important, therefore, that conditions of employment should be as comparable as possible to what is happening elsewhere.
I recognise that the Bill does not offer the same advantages to the older teachers as to some of the younger ones. I am no expert in this field, but I believe that this is always a problem with the introduction of any contributory pension scheme. The fact is that arguing for the best is arguing in enmity to the good. This is a good Bill. It is an advance, and I am sure that the Secretary of State did right to go ahead with it. We have to face the fact that we cannot take the whole mouthful at once. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman took the right course, although one recognises that the Bill does not offer exactly the same benefit to people of all ages.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Handsworth referred to part-timers. I recognise that they are not covered in the Bill but I hope that we shall have a progress report on the possible application of pensions to them, because I believe that we shall be increasingly dependent for a prolonged period on part-time service in teaching. I am not thinking of part-time in terms of people who come in for a few days but rather of people who may come back to teaching part-time at 35 years of age so that one may have about 20 years of part-time teaching from them.
As for Clause 4 and the provisions affecting overseas teaching, I entirely agree with the importance of this type of technical assistance, as has been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, South-West (Mr. Longden). It is immensely important that members of the teaching profession when engaged to do this valuable work should not suffer financially in any way

as a result. I do not believe that the standards of teaching in this country suffer by the loan of their services. More and more in other fields of employment, in industry and commerce, I believe that employers are looking to ways in which they can refresh the experience of the people whom they employ by giving them an insight into something outside the normal stream of experience.
I welcome this interchange in the universities and in Government service. I do not believe that our schools will suffer. On the contrary, I think that they will gain considerably by a steady stream of people going out to countries overseas for two or three years and coming back greatly enriched by what they have been able to see and do during that period. I welcome the Bill and I wish it a quick passage through the House.

12.14 p.m.

Mr. Russell Johnston: I hope that I shall not be considered presumptuous if I associate myself with the remarks of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle) in welcoming the new Minister of State for Education and Science. I also will be brief in my comments and I do not wish to be repetitive of remarks already made. I should like to concentrate on four points about the second main objective of the Bill, that of making provision for teachers' dependants.
I very much welcome this provision, but there are one or two things which deserve some attention. It has already been remarked that this proposal will not involve the employers directly. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have commented on this. One appreciates that local authorities would not agree to sharing contributions, and here again there is an additional point for the case that local authorities should be relieved altogether of responsibility for teachers' salaries. It might have been easier to make this provision if that had been done.
Equally, in this sphere we are repeatedly moving into inconsistencies in that not long ago we passed a dependants' Measure with reference to widows of Members of Parliament to which the State contributes. We are in danger here of creating a whole series of different categories. While we appreciate that the


Government are at present engaged in a general survey of social security, this is something which they should look at. Admittedly the contributions made are allowable for tax but this has varying effects. I have had some statistics prepared on this point. The contribution is at the rate of about 2 per cent. and while the tax is deductible the effect varies. The Minister quoted an average payment of 1.4 per cent., but I think that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Handsworth, in his intervention was correct in making the point that this was an average and not what applies at the lower end of the scale.
If someone is earning £2,000 a year he will certainly benefit, but this arrangement will not benefit the average school teacher to the same extent, where the top non-graduate increment point is £1,400 and where good honours graduates receive £1,620 under the scales agreed by the Burnham Committee on 29th July last. It is true that some heads of departments will qualify for full Income Tax relief, but they are a minority. It is a little inequitable that those earning £2,000 a year will have a net outlay of only 1·18 per cent. of salary whereas those earning less than £1,000 will have a net outlay of nearly 1·6 per cent. of salary.
I associate myself with the remarks of the hon. Member for Epping (Mr. Newens) on the question of the older teacher. Yesterday we were talking about parity of public service pensions. This is an extension of the same problem. Here again we are allowing the problem to build up and accumulate still further. One grants immediately that the cost of making any complete contribution to bring into account the past service of the older teacher would involve a heavy burden. The hon. Member for Epping quoted it as 15 per cent. of salary, and I imagine that that would be some sort of average because it would vary according to the salary.

Mr. Newens: As I understand it, in the report of the Working Party the maximum percentage allowed is 7 per cent. of salary in respect of back payments, which, added to the existing 2 per cent. for current benefit, plus the 6 per cent., makes 15 per cent. as the maximum permitted in the agreement.

Mr. Russell Johnston: I take the point. The calculations which I had prepared seemed to show, for example, that a teacher with 19 years' service would have had to pay about 10·8 per cent., which was not as high as that But the hon. Gentleman, I gather, was quoting the maximum.
Although the Minister is quite right to say that the cost of making this up, which is the whole problem in public service pensions, would be immense, one wonders whether a contribution could be made to alleviate it. I associate myself, at least in part, with what the hon. Member for Epping said. Although it is inevitable, in existing circumstances, that the Minister will reject a completely new look at it, it may be that he will sympathetically consider the possibility of mitigating the full effect by some sort of percentage allowance. We ought not to go on building up this problem, which already worries so many of us, making it worse for future Governments and future generations.
While the agreed rate payable is generally reasonable, I feel that we should look at the rate for widowed mothers more carefully in the future. Widowed mothers are in a special category, and the benefits suggested here are, perhaps, not sufficiently high. We ought to look forward to a much higher rate for the widowed mother particularly. Her responsibilities are so various and she is very often widowed at an age when, not having had prior experience, she finds it very difficult to secure other employment.
I conclude by again welcoming these provisions. I congratulate the Government on giving the Bill such early priority in their legislative proposals this year.

12.22 p.m.

Mr. J. E. B. Hill: I rise with some trepidation to make my first speech on the subject of teachers' superannuation. When I entered the House ten years ago, this topic was an urgent one, as was reflected in my mail. On this occasion, I have not had a single letter. The arguments seem to have given way to broad agreement, and I have so far noted nothing of importance in the education journals. Even so, the subject is a formidable one especially for someone who has, perhaps, strayed from the farmyard into the rich and exciting pastures of education because there are


so many Members of Parliament with professional qualifications in the educational world. They form an important group in the House, the foremost among them, of course, being yourself, Mr. Speaker. I understand that, if the General Election had given the Labour Party a rather larger swing, we should have had another large tranche of teachers added to their present strength so that they would have become the largest single group.
In the debate on the last Bill nine years ago, no little anxiety was revealed about the effects of service here on teachers' superannuation rights. The present Government Chief Whip had to be reassured by the then Minister, now Lord Eccles, that he would be able to put himself right should the chances of political fortune return him to teaching. These fears proved groundless. Many of the participants in that debate are now Ministers at one level or another in the Foreign Office, the Home Office and elsewhere. Of course, some relief of their anxiety may have come, as the hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. Russell Johnston) said, from the fact that we now have our own pension fund to which there is a significant Government contribution.
The debate has had certain conjectural features because, as with most enabling Bills, we cannot at this stage judge in detail what we should most like to examine, namely, the end product. I, too, welcome the removal of multifarious and ever-changing detail from the Statute Book, and I disagree with the view of the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance that it was a pity to put teachers' superannuation in Statutory Instruments. As hon. Members have emphasised, this method must provide more flexibility and a quicker response when changes are needed. But I enter the caveat that it means that the House of Commons itself will have little chance to amend subsequent regulations, which, coming before us under the negative procedure, can only be prayed against as a whole, and, of course, often at a late hour. It is important, therefore, that the Minister should obtain the maximum advance agreement between the parties interested, and I think it desirable not to lump together in the same Order too many different aspects of superannuation matters. I hope that

we shall have a separate chance to judge and criticise, and perhaps vote upon, the scheme for widows and children and the scheme for dependants when they come forward.
On the main provisions for superannuation, I emphasise the request made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle). We hope for an early decision and action on the question of pensions for part-time teachers. Part-timers are playing, and will continue to play, a most important role, and we must do all we can to encourage and hold them in the service. Satisfactory pensions and other arrangements are bound to operate as an added incentive for teachers to start and to stay in part-time service as long as they can. As many married women will be concerned, I hope that such part-time teachers will be eligible also for any dependants schemes which may follow the Bill. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, South-West (Mr. Longden), I stress that arrangements for measuring part-time service need to be flexible; such matters as half days should be aggregated to make full days, and so on, without too much difficulty.
We must try to remove all these marginal discouragements. This general proposition applies very much to part-time work by retired teachers. More than any other category of teacher, they may be able to relieve the overall shortage by coming back to part-time service. The difficulty here is not only the effect of the earnings rule in general but the particular education anomalies to which my hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, South-West referred. The abatement of a retired teacher's pension if he engages in teaching or other employment in State schools is undoubtedly a disincentive. It seems manifestly absurd that he should suffer a less severe reduction in pension if he works in some other private activity, including private teaching or examining other than in State-aided work. In general, it must be right that teachers should be encouraged to continue at the work for which they are best qualified and in which they are most needed, namely, teaching.
I hope, therefore, that this whole subject is being considered by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in his


current review of all aspects of pensions and National Health and Insurance benefits, and I am encouraged in this by what was said yesterday by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury on the subject of public service pensions. It needs looking at. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Mr. Hornby) stressed, this type of abatement at present taking place in teachers' pensions is becoming out of tune with the best modern practice. I think that our public service and teachers' pensions should draw nearer to the best practice in private schemes and that retired teachers should be encouraged to go on making their contributions to the educational service.
I welcome Clause 4 which encourages teachers to go overseas without suffering this previous marginal disincentive. May I, in particular, stress what my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge said not only about the importance of their service to the developing countries but also about the great benefits which they themselves may derive from this refreshment of their experience in work quite different from their experience in this country. They will have the chance of communicating this new enthusiasm to the benefit of their pupils who, in turn, may well be inspired to go on voluntary service overseas.
The most important innovation of the Bill is undoubtedly the provision for widows and dependants. I welcome this new pension scheme for widows because it promises to be the end of a long road. Here I think we owe much to the skill and initiative of my right hon. Friend the Member for Hands-worth. In fact, it seems that we have reversed the old song's travel arrangements. We failed in the Teachers' Superannuation Bill, 1956, to make much progress along what might be called the high road to widows' pensions—on the same lines as some other local authority employees, by surrendering part of their lump sum retirement payment. The Scots, similarly blocked, took the low road to the Treasury by devising this scheme of teachers' contributions which attract Income Tax relief, and they have arrived at widow's benefits before us. The hon. Member for Inverness makes a very good Scottish guide along that road. I should like to pay tribute to the care with which the Working Party has gone into these

schemes and has produced what seems to be viable and flexible suggestions.
I should like to ask the Minister of State one or two questions on that point. Could he say whether the widows' scheme and any dependants' scheme will be available, in the same way as the main superannuation provisions are, for teachers in approved non-teaching employment and also in schemes for schools other than maintained schools? Secondly, at the top of the scale which is proposed in the Working Party's report, might we not consider the situation of teachers with the highest salaries, who might well wish to make better provision for their widows than seems possible under the suggested scheme? For example, a teacher retiring after 40 years' service with a qualifying salary of £2,000 can provide his widow with only one-third of the £1,000 pension —namely, £333. Many such teachers might wish to make a greater contribution. At the other end of the scale, is not the suggested figure of £114 rather too low as a minimum pension for a widow?
Allied to that is the question of the high cost for older teachers, which, as the hon. Member for Epping (Mr. Newens) stressed, is a hefty burden, of buying in their past service. I wonder whether the Minister still feels unable to consult his colleagues again to see whether some contribution could be made to meeting this rather heavy extra charge. After all, in the Conservative Party's Bill of 1956 the Government then provided a credit for the teachers superannuation fund of no less than £340 million in order to repair an actuarial deficiency. That credit has since attracted each year a sum of no less than £12 million interest. I would claim that as some evidence of past generosity by the Conservative Government. Perhaps the present Government would look again at that difficulty.
I hope, too, that the dependants' scheme will be especially useful to women teachers and to those with responsibilities to parents and close relatives. Again, most of us would like to know when that scheme is likely to be promulgated. I realise that the running of the scheme and the collecting of all the information represents a formidable task for the Ministry of Education. Equally, however, I welcome the fact that the Ministry will be in direct communication with the teachers on many of those most personal subjects.


It is the fashion at the moment to ask the Government, and I am tempted to ask whether the operation of this scheme will be entrusted to the Ministry's computer.
It seems to me that teaching is the key profession whose members' dedication and competence can unlock and inspire the unrealised potential of the younger generations. We need them to succeed in doing this in order to carry us on from 1970 to the end of the century and beyond. We want teachers to have and to communicate to their pupils a sense of satisfaction in work well done. For this we need as far as possible to relieve them from distracting anxieties, especially those concerning retirement and the continuing provision which they would like to make for those who are dependent upon them.
Subject to any Amendments which may be thought desirable at a later stage, I believe that the schemes projected under the Bill should fulfil a long-felt need. I hope that they will operate to hold teachers in the service, and to attract newcomers and re-entrants, and that there will be the least possible delay in making our hopes for improved conditions of service a reality.

12.37 p.m.

The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mr. Edward Redhead): May I, for the benefit of those hon. Members who entered the Chamber later, repeat the apology which my right hon. Friend expressed at the opening of the debate. My right hon. Friend very much regrets that, owing to another pressing engagement which he could not avoid, he was unable to remain for the rest of the discussion.
When he began, the hon. Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. J. E. B. Hill) said that he had entered on this subject with a great deal of trepidation and I am sure that he will appreciate that, being precipitated so soon after my advent to the Department of Education and Science into such a complex matter, I share his degree of trepidation about it. Nevertheless, I am consoled and comforted by the very kindly personal references of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle) and others who welcomed me to this position. It is true that the right hon. Gentleman paid very generous tribute to my predecessor

in office, but he then did it in the early hours of the morning, between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. At any rate on this occasion we are able to discuss this matter in easier circumstances.
I do not propose to detain the House unduly long as the general purposes of the Bill have been so warmly welcomed on both sides of the House. It is highly gratifying that the right hon. Member for Handsworth, on behalf of the Opposition, and other hon. Members have given an assurance of their unreserved welcome for the Bill and of their full co-operation in seeking to carry it on to the Statute Book at the earliest possible moment.
I am sure that it is right and proper that in the major Clauses, Clauses 1 and 2, we should seek at long last to simplify this wholly complex business which at the moment is baffling not only to those who come as laymen to the problem— indeed, it is more baffling than any superannuation scheme which I have seen in any sphere of the public service—but even to those who are accounted experts in the field and who have the task of administration. There is no question but that this will make greatly for ease of administration, and I am sure that it will be welcomed by the teaching profession in making it easier for an individual to find out with a little more exactitude where he stands and what are his rights and opportunities in this connection.
It has been rightly said that Clause 3 represents the rectification of a very serious omission in the superannuation arrangements for the teaching profession. I am delighted that there is such a general welcome to the fact that at long last there has been agreement on this subject and that a scheme of widows' and dependants' pensions is possible. I am very glad that it has been so warmly welcomed in all parts of the House.
My hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mr. Newens) who, among others, welcomed the Bill said, rightly, that for the younger members of the teaching profession it represents a superior opportunity to that which could be obtained by any means in a private scheme. I am sure that it will go a very long way to ease the burdens of those who are rightly concerned to make provision for eventualities of the kind which the scheme is designed to meet.
The Working Party of February, 1964, produced this proposal. The right hon. Member for Handsworth emphasised that this is not a shared-cost scheme. He clearly understood that my right hon. Friend has taken the same view as he himself took when in office—that, having regard to all the circumstances and the precedents, a shared-cost scheme was not a reasonable possibility. I am glad to have his assessment of the position.
Of course, the Department which will have to control and supervise this very important aspect will be bearing the administrative expenses, and the local education authorities will likewise bear their share. In that sense a contribution is being made. It will be appreciated that the Department will be faced with the necessity for some increase in staff. I hope that no hon. Member in the future will point a finger of scorn or criticism at the Department in that respect. Having welcomed the purpose of the Bill, hon. Members must accept that we must have the human agents to administer it.
There has been comment on the problem of older teachers, in particular by the hon. Member for Tonbridge (Mr. Hornby) and my hon. Friend the Member for Epping. Naturally, one's sympathy is always excited in considerations of this kind, but I should like to emphasise what the hon. Member for Ton-bridge rightly said—that this is always a problem when one introduces a scheme of this kind, for one cannot possibly go back and repair what has been lacking over the years. The best that one can hope to do is to ease the path as reasonably as possible and to provide for the future.
I must emphasise in this connection that this scheme is designed primarily for the younger teacher. It was inevitable that the cost of entering such a scheme at a late stage would fall very heavily on teachers who had made no payment until the end of their career. I can only repeat that the capital cost of a subsidy, on the most modest estimate, would be several millions of pounds and that this form of subvention would be concentrated on a limited age group. Clearly this would be difficult to defend, particularly having regard to the fact that in the absence of any such provision some teachers, with a hard struggle,

have sought to make provision for their widows against the possibility of their own early decease by a private scheme, and because they have already entered that commitment they would not find it possible, even with a subsidy, to opt to come into a scheme of this character.
They would therefore derive no benefit and it would, in the sense of what my right hon. Friend said, be a gift to the improvident rather than to the provident. We have looked at this very carefully. The remarks, which have been quoted, of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance when she was sitting opposite, were, I am sure, an expression of her sympathy in the matter and it is a sympathy which we all share.
I have been asked to comment about the situation, which we recognise to be extremely important, on the operations of the Working Party on the superannuation of part-time teachers. The first meeting of the Working Party has already taken place, the issues have been defined and progress will be made as rapidly as possible. It is the full intention to press on with this, recognising the importance of any contribution which can be made to the relief of the teacher shortage. I was glad that the right hon. Gentleman acknowledged the progress which has been made in other respects. We attach equal importance to progress in this field. We are also anxious to ensure that the operations of the Working Party on the superannuation aspect shall run in parallel with the Burnham Committee's deliberations on remuneration of such part-time teachers. Clearly, the two things have to move in parallel.
It is refreshing to find a Clause bearing the number "4" being so universally welcomed in this House. I shall resist the temptation to widen the discussion in this regard but undoubtedly the Clause is a valuable contribution facilitating a form of very valuable aid to overseas countries. It is clearly right, and I am glad that the House generally has welcomed it, that those who give this kind of service, which we are so anxious to facilitate, should not in consequence be at a loss or have any serious disadvantage with regard to their pensions. This Clause is well merited.

Mr. Hornby: Will the Minister of State clear up one point on Clause 4? The last sentence of the Explanatory Memorandum states that no net additional cost will be entailed by Clause 4. Perhaps I have failed to understand it. However, I find it slightly confusing in that pensions will be available to people going abroad on the basis of a salary which they may not, in fact, be receiving, so that someone, surely, must be carrying the cost of the gap.

Mr. Redhead: But correspondingly the teacher's contribution will be based upon the notional salary rather than on the actual salary. In one respect, one can say that he is making his own contribution so that there will be no net additional cost as a result of the operation.
The hon. Member for Hertfordshire, South-West (Mr. Longden), in sharing the expressions of welcome to the Bill, referred to a number of anomalies which he hoped we might have an opportunity to consider further. Some of them can perhaps be raised in Committee and I shall not go into the intricacies and finer points of detail, for that would be inappropriate on Second Reading. We are not seeking to change the fundamental existing superannuation provisions but to codify them and render them in regulations which will be comprehensible. They will be enshrined in these regulations altogether instead of being in a multiplicity of Statutes. This will enable all aspects to be considered and any faults remedied with much greater speed than is possible now, when we are bound to think in terms of legislative amendment before anomalies can be rectified. Of course, I do not commit myself necessarily to agreeing with what the hon. Gentleman said about the anomalies he referred to but it is fair to say that this system will be capable of examination and remedy infinitely better than the present.
My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Ogden) said that I would not be surprised that those who welcomed the Bill would nevertheless ask for more. I appreciate that attitude in so far as I have so often in the past found myself in the position of welcoming a new scheme but still wishing to press for more. One always hopes for improvement.
My hon. Friend referred to the rate of pension of those already retired. I am sure he will agree on reflection that this Bill is not the appropriate ambit to think in terms of this kind. The subject is tied up with the more general aspects of pension increase in the public service and one which would not be right to cater for within the compass of this Bill, with its rather limited purpose.
I do not want to follow the hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. Russell Johnston) on the subject of relieving local authorities of expenditure on teachers' salaries. That would not be an appropriate subject for discussion now in the context of the Bill. But I confirm that the figure quoted by my right hon. Friend in respect of tax relief—1·4 per cent.—is the average net. Obviously, it could not be applicable to any and every case. The rate of tax of an individual will vary to such a degree that there are bound to be degrees of variation in the measure of relief earned by the individual. This is an average figure and it is fair to make the point that such relief, which is not open to civil servants in their scheme, makes the teachers' scheme, as the right hon. Gentleman acknowledged, in every way comparable and in some respects even better than the civil servants' scheme. I do not want to go into detail but I think that anyone who examines it will have to agree in that respect.
The hon. Member for Tonbridge said that it was always difficult when opposing an enabling Bill of this character to apprehend the end-product. Again I emphasise that the basic fundamental provisions for superannuation remain. We are not changing them. The regulations will embrace them in so far as they do not already reside in the Statutes. It is not the purpose of the Bill to change any of the existing provisions but to provide for a new form of machinery whereby, in future, changes may be made, if agreed and acceptable to this House, in a way that will be much easier and much more readily varied.
The hon. Gentleman expressed the view that in so far as this move gives the House very little chance of amendment of the eventual regulations, such amendments should not be embarked upon without every effort being made to secure the maximum agreement by consultation with those concerned. I readily give that


assurance. It is an obligation under the Bill that, in framing a regulation or amendment, there shall be full consultation and I assure the House that, obviously, it would be the earnest desire of the Government to secure the maximum degree of agreement before any amendments of that character were made by way of Statutory Instrument.
The hon. Member also referred to the question of abatement of teachers' superannuation. Here again, as he rightly said, this is not a position unique to teachers and is a more general problem. He referred to the current review of the social services being undertaken by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. I will draw my right hon. Friend's attention to this matter in so far as the reference is appropriate.
The hon. Gentleman also asked whether the widows' and dependants' scheme will be available to those who are in non-teaching or other posts and are brought into teachers' superannuation. The answer is "Yes, it will be available to them." He also asked whether provision might be possible for those teachers who are at a higher salary rate and who might desire to make rather better provision for their widows than is contemplated in the scheme. I can only say now, without commitment, that this can and will be examined.
The hon. Gentleman also raised the point as to the question of whether or no the widows' pension minimum rate is adequate. This in course of time will be looked at but I must point out that it is one of the merits of doing the thing in this way, as my right hon. Friend pointed out, that if, in the result of the first period of operation of the widows' and dependants' scheme, our actuarial valuation showed that there were a surplus in the fund to be set up, it would be open to consider either a reduction of contributions or an improvement of benefit. This clearly is one of the advantages of operating the scheme in this way and for the future we will naturally look for such possibilities. To my hon. Friend the Member for West Derby, who said that more would be asked for, I would reply that, having got the machinery and the

fund, it is always open in future to look at these points.
The hon. Gentleman also asked when it is hoped to bring the scheme into operation. My right hon. Friend indicated that, given a speedy passage of the Bill—of which we are happily assured by both sides of the House—it is our hope and intention that it should operate from April. A great deal of work will be involved, as everyone recognises.
Having said that, I would like to again express my gratification for the manner in which the House has welcomed the Bill. I am sure that it represents a real social advance not only in aid of the teachers themselves but in the contribution it can make in education, for all of us recognise that the status of the teacher is of tremendous and increasing importance in the community and that we need to do everything we can to attract people into the profession in order to meet the fundamental needs of the future of the nation and to ensure that our education is not only well based but that the quality and number of our teachers is requisite to carry us forward to the advance for which we all hope.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr.Whitlock.]

Committee upon Monday next.

TEACHERS' SUPERANNUATION [MONEY]

[Queen's Recommendation signified] Considered in Committee under Standing Order No. 88 (Money Committees).

[Mr. RODERIC BOWEN in the Chair]

Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to amend the law relating to the superannuation and other benefits payable to or in respect of teachers and certain other persons employed in connection with the provision of education services, it is expedient to authorise—

(1) the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any expenses incurred by the Secretary of State in consequence of any provision of the said Act or of regulations made thereunder;
(2) the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any increase attributable


to any provision of the said Act or of regulations made thereunder in the sums payable out of moneys so provided under any other enactment, and
(3) the payment into the Exchequer of any sums received by the Secretary of State by virtue of any provision of the said Act or of regulations made thereunder.—[Mr. Redhead.]

Resolution to be reported.

Report to be received upon Monday next.

WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION AND BENEFIT (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

1.0 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (Mr. Harold Davies): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second Time.
My hon. Friends and hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite will no doubt be gratified to see that at last some move has been made in this section of Workmen's Compensation benefit. There is not the slightest doubt that great credit can be taken for the part which my hon. Friends have played over the years in drawing the attention of various Governments to this need, and at last we have been able to do something about it. This is in no small measure due to the energy and tenacity of purpose of the Minister. I also pay tribute to the devoted and meticulous work done by the officials who are in the background, but without whose professional help this little Bill, of great importance in the industrial and mining areas of Britain, would not have been before the House. It is fit and proper that in introducing the Bill I should pay tribute to the expert work of the officials of our Ministry.
The Bill extends and improves provision made from the Industrial Injuries Fund for "old cases "—that is, men disabled by an injury or industrial disease due to employment before 5th July, 1948, when the Industrial Injuries Act came into operation. The consequences of such disablement are dealt with under the repealed Workmen's Compensation Acts. Under those Acts, compensation is a liability of employers, being two-thirds of the amount of the earnings lost due to the disablement, subject to a maximum of £2 a week, or, where the man concerned has a wife to whom he was married before the accident, £2 10s.
The problem of old cases has exercised successive Governments since the repeal of the old Acts, as is illustrated by the list of enactments dealing with it since the inception of the Industrial Injuries Scheme. The problem has two main aspects. First, the maximum rates of


compensation, which have remained unchanged at levels last fixed in 1943, would almost certainly have been subsequently increased had not the whole Workmen's Compensation legislation been replaced by the Industrial Injuries Acts. Secondly, the way in which the courts applied the Workmen's Compensation rules in determining loss of earnings had the result that some men were unable to establish title to compensation as expected on a layman's concept of loss of earnings. This problem is inevitable when it is necessary to use a precise definition for a general concept, such as is involved in the loss of earnings, in order that it can be brought into a Statute which falls for determination by the courts. It is impossible to account for variations in industrial practice, or to anticipate changes which can take place in the structure and economics of an industry years after the making of the Statute.
It proved impracticable to devise a means whereby these men could be satisfactorily assimilated into the Industrial Injuries Scheme. The solution to the problem has been by way of providing help to meet real hardship when it emerged. Over the years a series of Measures has been devised to this end, each of which widened the concept of hardship to be remedied and most of which relied heavily for their feasibility upon experience derived from running earlier schemes. Help was given by way of providing supplementary payments from the Industrial Injuries Fund for these special categories of old cases. We have five different ways which I will enumerate, because it is important to get the background to the Bill on the record at this stage.
First, the Industrial Injuries Act, 1946, extended unemployability supplement and constant attendance allowance to persons on compensation on the same conditions as for Industrial Injuries Act beneficiaries. Secondly, the Workmen's Compensation Supplementation Act, 1951, tackled the problem of the "pre-1924" compensation cases and enabled supplementary weekly allowances to be paid to bring their compensation broadly to the same level as that payable to "post-1923" men. Thirdly, the Industrial Diseases (Benefit) Acts, 1951 and 1954, applied to the time-barred cases and enabled allowances to

be paid for both the totally and the partially disabled. Fourthly, the Workmen's Compensation and Benefit (Supplementation) Act, 1956, provided a supplement for "totals". Fifthly, the Family Allowances and National Insurance Act, 1961, extended the 1951 Act to "post-923" cases and provided for a supplement to "partials" on maximum compensation. As hon. Members will see, various Governments have had several bites at this difficult cherry.
The history of this subject, as I have indicated, has been one of continuous Parliamentary activity on behalf of old cases. Dissatisfaction has arisen from those excluded from the scope of succeeding schemes and, in particular, from the partially incapacitated men on less than maximum rates, many of whom, it is said, will never be able to qualify for inclusion in the present schemes because of the way in which the Workmen's Compensation loss of earnings rules work out in their cases. There has been a series of deputations to Ministers, the most recent from the Trades Union Congress in July, 1964, which was received by the then Minister, the right hon. Member for Bridlington (Mr. Wood) who agreed to re-examine the whole question.
A necessary first step to any reexamination was a fact-finding inquiry to get a better idea of what was happening to partially incapacitated men on compensation. The present Government proceeded with that re-examination. The inquiry was put in hand in the autumn of 1964 and the Ministry is very much indebted to those employers and trade unions who co-operated by providing confidentially the mass of data about individual men on compensation. The employers were able to set out the problems regarding loss of earnings from their records, while the unions were able to complement the picture by specifically illustrating their allegations about the inadequacy of the measure of loss of earnings arrived at under the workmen's compensation rules.
The inquiry was followed by consideration of various possible schemes for meeting the remaining difficulties of old cases by means of an equitable system of payments out of the Industrial Injuries Fund. An extension of supplementation


to "partials" on less than maximum compensation was shown to be practicable, provided that a certain measure of rough justice as between beneficiaries was accepted.
Clearly there has to be an entrance ticket to the new scheme, and this will take the form of a certain level of genuine workmen's compensation. But once a man is included in the scheme all the old difficulties arising from the workmen's compensation loss of earnings rule will be swept away. Under the Bill we plan to gear the supplement to loss of earnings as measured by the Workmen's Compensation Board and not to the amount of Workmen's Compensation in payment. I will repeat that, because this is naturally very closely argued, and, having to deal with courts and the law, it is a point of importance—if the House will bear with me and not think that I am pedantic I will repeat it. We plan to gear the supplement to loss of earnings as measured by the Workmen's Compensation Board and not to the amount of workmen's compensation in payment.
The Board will have discretion to deal with the out-of-run cases. Also, this presented an opportunity of making some minor improvements to the present provisions and rearranging the existing enactments to form a more closely integrated system with a view to consolidating them in the near future.
It may be that experience of the proposals in the new scheme to deal with partially incapacitated men will bring in large numbers of cases of a type which will enable a good deal of light to be thrown on the small, special group of "latents" said to be suffering hardship from the way in which the Workmen's Compensation rules apply to them. But even when this is done there is still the overriding difficulty of devising some way of sorting them out from the overwhelming mass of old cases to bring any scheme within practical bounds. At present, there are no signs that this can be overcome in the near future.
The Bill, therefore, is an enabling Measure, and relies on powers in the 1951 Supplementation Act to make schemes which will give substance and form to the bare outline of the Bill. The

implementing schemes will be subject to affirmative Resolution of both Houses of Parliament, who will thus have an opportunity of studying the details of the way in which effect is given to the Bill. I now want to describe the main provisions of the Bill and to indicate briefly how it is intended to use the powers taken, and how many persons will be affected by them.
Clause 1 continues the provision for what I now want to call the basic allowance. This relates solely to the "pre-1924" men. Its object is to put a "pre-1924" man on all fours with men injured after 1st January, 1924, when he comes to claim his supplementary allowance under the new scheme. The effect of this basic allowance is to raise his compensation to what he would have had had his compensation been assessed on the post-1923 Workmen's Compensation rules. I admit that it sounds difficult, but the House will have ample opportunity in Committee and at other stages to go into it in depth. It is important, however, to get all this on the record.
The Bill provides that this allowance should accordingly be treated as if it were compensation for the purposes of qualifying for the "major- "and" lesser-incapacity" allowances, which I shall describe in a moment. It is for this reason that I term it the basic allowance. The two new allowances are payable on identical terms to all men on compensation, whether compensated under the pre-1924 provisions or later provisions.
The "major incapacity allowance" is for long-term total incapacity or total disablement. The conditions for it are the same as for the supplementation allowance provided by the Supplementation Act, 1956, which is repealed. The Bill, however, makes an important change in the terms in which the rate of the allowance is described. Paragraph (4)(b) lays it down that this shall be the rate of the 100 per cent. industrial injuries disablement pension, less the amount of any workmen's compensation, and also, for pre-1924 cases, less the amount of any basic allowance in payment in lieu of compensation. The first effect of this change is that any alteration in the rate of the 100 per cent. disablement pension payable under the Industrial Injuries Act will automatically be reflected in the rate


of the "major incapacity" allowance, and at present there is no such link.
When the Supplementation Act 1956 was introduced the rate of the allowance was set at 17s. 6d. This, together with the £2 10s. rate of compensation payable to a man with a "pre-accident" wife, enabled him to receive in aggregate the sum of £3 7s. 6d., the then rate of 100 per cent. disablement pension. Succeeding increases in the rates of disablement benefit were not, until 1963, matched by parallel increases in the supplement for totally disabled "old cases", notwithstanding the pressure from Labour benches at this time for this to be done. However, the National Insurance Act, 1963, was amended—and this is where, as I said, both sides of the House had their bite at the cherry—in the course of its passage through Parliament to include provisions which restored the measure of parity reached in 1956 and this was maintained in the National Insurance &c. Act, 1964 when the supplementary allowance was raised to its present rate of £4 5s.
The second effect of the new provision is that it will remove the anomaly whereby the totally disabled man on maximum compensation who happened to have a "pre-accident" wife was in aggregate better off than the others. Under the Industrial Injuries Act dependency plays no part in the compensation for disablement itself, and all the 100 per cent. disablement pensioners receive the same whether or not they are married. Under the new proposal all men on compensation will receive the same rate. The effect is that 1,200 of the 3,500 men on compensation in receipt of the present supplement for total disablement will receive a further 10s. The comparable time-barred men are similarly dealt with in Clause 2.
The "lesser incapacity" allowance is an entirely new allowance payable to all partially disabled men in receipt of compensation of 5s. a week or more. It replaces the existing allowance, which is limited to those men who have reached the maximum rates of compensation. Like the "major incapacity" allowance, it aims to iron out differences in treatment between men with "pre-accident" wives and others. Such men get £2 10s. in compensation, plus the supplementary allowance of £2 2s. 6d. Other men get

£2 plus £2 2s. 6d. The new allowance is a maximum of £2 7s. 6d., 5s. more than the present allowance.
As I have said, the rate of the allowance will be geared to loss of earnings, and will be calculated by rules derived from the experience gained by the Department in administering the special hardship allowance under the Industrial Injuries Acts. It is to be associated with new provisions ensuring that, in future, the aggregate benefit payable by way of supplementary allowance and compensation shall be the same, irrespective of whether or not the beneficiary has compensation in respect of a "pre-accident" wife.
A few men would stand to lose a few shillings as a result of this change, but power is provided elsewhere in the Bill to secure that no person shall be the loser as the result of the new provisions. Newcomers will, of course, have their benefit assessed solely in accordance with the new scheme. The newcomers are expected to number about 10,000, and existing beneficiaries about 6,000.
The inquiry showed that it was impossible at this stage to do anything reasonable for the "latents". There might be more than 200,000 of these, of whom only a tiny handful could be said to be suffering hardship. Practically all the "latents" examined in the inquiry had little or no residual disablement and the isablement which existed was due principally to old age—
I apologise to the House for the terrible cold I have today.
There also appeared to be appreciable numbers of people who, although "latents "were in receipt of token payments: this is a device used by certain employers as an alternative to the usual declaration of liability to workmen's compensation, to keep the compensation title alive during periods when there is no actual loss of earnings. At some times, the amount is a shilling or so; at others, the payment is nothing. Hon. and right hon. Gentlemen from the industrial and mining areas know quite well what this implies.
In order to exclude all "latents", whether receiving this token payment or not, a figure had to be arrived at and 5s. seems to us an appropriate one, since the inquiry suggests that the number of


men in receipt of genuine, rather than mere token, compensation of a lesser amount was probably only about 1 per cent. The minimum supplement is intended to be set at a comparable figure: we think it might really be rather disproportionate to pay this—and greater— amounts in addition to trivial amounts of compensation. And, of course, the cost of administration of a much smaller allowance by weekly order book might also be disproportionate to the benefit which it would give to claimants.
I need hardly say that if the appreciable number of latents receiving token payments were to gain the impression that they might qualify, there might well arise a flood of claims which would seriously jeopardise not only the timetable worked out but the whole administration of the new scheme. So we really want to avoid stimulating false hopes in a large number of men. Not only would much unnecessary disappointment be caused, but it would also prevent us from getting the money out quickly to the men who need it.
I turn now to a handful of men who— although classed as totally incapacitated solely for the purposes of the Workmen's Compensation Act—are not totally disabled in the more modern sense adopted in the insurance schemes. This situation has arisen because some employers for the convenience of their own administration, classified the men as totally incapacitated more or less because they had been in receipt of maximum workmen's compensation for a long time.
These men did not satisfy the criteria of the 1956 Act for totals and this position still obtains. Clause l(5,b) therefore makes special provision so that such men are entitled to the "lesser incapacity" allowance, notwithstanding the misleading classification adopted for compensation purposes.
The detailed conditions for the "lesser incapacity" allowance are to be left to the implementing scheme, the proposed Workmen's Compensation (Supplementation) Scheme. It is envisaged that the main provisions of the scheme will be these. The administration of the scheme will be for the present Workmen's Compensation Supplementation Board. The scheme will set out a series of flat-rate

allowances ranging from about 7s. 6d. a week up to £2 7s. 6d. a week; each rate will be related to a specific range of loss of earnings.
The appropriate flat-rate allowance will be decided by the Board in accordance with the new rules to which I have referred which get away from the rules used for workmen's compensation purposes. This was the only way in which a formula could be found to meet these old cases. Studies of the cases submitted by unions in the course of the enquiry show that these new rules will help the man whose weekly payment of compensation is said to be based on an unrealistic estimate of his loss of earnings.
We are satisfied that this should overcome the short-time working problem and produce a more realistic result in those cases where "rates of remuneration" adopted for workmen's compensation purposes are out of touch with the current earnings. The effect of these changes should be a major advance in dealing with old cases.
The award will be based on the best estimate the Board can make, given a wide discretion, of the loss of earnings which a worker can be said to be suffering at the time this scheme comes into operation. Too rigid a rule in this respect could give rise to injustice.
The appropriate allowance will then be put in payment at a rate which will remain unchanged notwithstanding minor or temporary fluctuations in the loss of earnings. There will, of course, be a right of review, but this will only be applicable where exceptional and unforeseen changes in the circumstances of the individual take place.
The scheme will ensure that the aggregate benefit payable by way of allowances and compensation will be the same, whether or not the claimant has the extra 10s. workmen's compensation for his wife merely because he happened to be married to her before the date of his compensatable accident.
Although the new rules will mean that an entirely new group of men will now come within the scope of the supplementary allowances, and that most of the existing beneficiaries stand to gain something, it has been quite impossible to ensure that all those in receipt of the


present supplementary allowance will gain under the new scheme.
This situation arises almost exclusively in relation to those men I have just mentioned, who are in receipt of the maximum amount of the existing supplements. The provision in the Bill will enable a rule to be made to ensure that no man in receipt of such an allowance will lose as a result of the change from the old to the new rules. All others will, of course, have their allowance determined on the basis of the new scheme.
The scheme will be introduced as soon as is possible after the Bill has received the Royal Assent.
Clause 2 deals with time-barred men who are totally disabled. Its object is to secure for the recipients the same benefit as the aggregate of compensation and supplementary allowance received by their totally disabled counterparts on compensation. They will receive a weekly allowance of £6 15s., the rate of disablement pension for 100 per cent. assessment. Like the benefit for men on compensation, this new rate is, as I have indicated, deliberately framed in terms of the disablement pension rate to ensure that any subsequent changes in the latter will automatically be forthcoming to these men as well.
The effect of the change is that 1,400 totally disabled time-barred men will receive an increase of 10s. a week. The Clause also continues the provision in the existing 1956 Act for men who are totally incapacitated by a combination of injuries attracting workmen's compensation and industrial diseases qualifying under the Industrial Diseases (Benefit) Acts.
No changes are made in the rates of the supplementary allowance for the partially incapacitated time-barred men. These have received a flat-rate allowance since 1954; it was originally set at £1 a week but is now payable at the rate of £2 10s. This compares favourably with what their Industrial Injuries counterparts would get on the one hand, and others in receipt of compensation on the other and is, therefore, not being changed.
Clause 3 makes overlapping and transitional provisions. Power is taken in Clause 3(1) to adjust the rate of, or extinguish entitlement to, an allowance where there is title to more than one.

The general purpose of this is to enable the schemes to prevent a claimant being at a considerable advantage merely because his condition is attributable to causes dealt with under different provisions. The overall intention is to secure that benefit paid from the Industrial Injuries Fund in respect of pre-1948 conditions shall not exceed the rate of the 100 per cent. disablement pension. This parallels the rule under the Industrial Injuries scheme.
Clause 3(2) enables allowances to continue in payment at the present rate, should it happen that the change-over results in a lower aggregate of benefit than the present arrangements. This might possibly be called for if there should happen to be an odd case— although none are known—when an existing beneficiary is receiving more than £6 15s. in "old cases" benefit. but it is more likely to arise from the adjustment of the new "lesser incapacity" allowance by reference to the extra 10s. workmen's compensation for a man with a "pre-accident" wife.
Clauses 4, 5 and 6 and Schedules 1 and 2 deal with the necessary technical matters to give force to the general proposals of the preceding Clauses. Clause 4 deals with definitions and explanations and makes provision to consolidate the provisions of the existing schemes which will have to take place shortly after the new schemes authorised by this Bill. Clause 5 is the usual money Clause. Clause 6 deals with citation. The Schedules deal with the usual miscellany of minor consequential amendments and are highly technical.
It is planned that the Bill should come into effect by March next year, but this is absolutely dependent on the Parliamentary timetable. The schemes to be made require affirmative resolutions of both Houses of Parliament and cannot be laid until Royal Assent is obtained to the Bill itself. To reduce delays to a minimum, as much administrative work as can be tackled is being pushed ahead concurrently with the Parliamentary programme. Much of this work consists of inquiries of employers about the earnings situations of claimants, and their progress naturally depends on a continuance of the ready co-operation that has always been forthcoming in the past to assist in the administration of the schemes.
The programme which is being worked out to do all this work reduces by one week the time taken to bring into force the extensions made to the earlier schemes in 1961 and 1962. This has been done notwithstanding the fact that 9,000 existing awards will have to be looked at afresh. In addition, there may be as many as 10,000 new beneficiaries involving a correspondingly large number of claims to be examined in full detail for the first time. The time-table is so finely worked out that it is absolutely dependent on no unexpected snags developing.
The Bill makes major and radical changes in the provision for old cases and tackles problems formerly thought to be quite intractable. This entails a recasting of the existing schemes and although everything has been done to ensure that no one will be the worse off, the new approach is so different from that of the old that a certain measure of rough justice has had to be adopted. I am confident, however, that once the scheme has been operating for a while the rough edges will disappear.
I apologise to the House for having taken a good deal of time to explain the Measure, but I am sure that hon. Members appreciate that it is a technical piece of legislation which needs to be carefully explained.

1.36 p.m.

Mr. Geoffrey Howe: I am sure the whole House feels that there was absolutely no need for the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to apologise for the way in which he explained the Bill. It is a Measure which we have all found extremely complicated, and we thank the hon. Gentleman for the great care and lucidity with which he explained it to us; and added his own explanations to those with which he had been provided, so increasing the lucid way in which he explained it.
It is with the utmost diffidence that I say anything about the Bill. However, I was fortified to see, when reading the earlier debates on a former Measure, that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridlington (Mr. Wood) pointed out that he had been fortified by the advice given to him by his Department and added that in the relatively short connection which he had had with the subject of work-

men's compensation he had found two things—first, that it looked difficult and, secondly, that it was a great deal less simple than it looked. I re-echo that sentiment.
I count it a privilege to speak on this subject. I was born and brought up in the South Wales coalfields and from my earliest childhood I can recollect the impact made on my father, who was coroner for West Glamorgan, as he went to the ends of all the mining valleys in those coalfields, by the tragedies arising in the coal-mining industry, not only from injury and accident but from the incidence of silicosis, pneumoconiosis and other diseases. I therefore could not fail to be aware of the importance in that context of workmen's compensation and. therefore. of the necessity for keeping it up to date.
My hon. Friends and I are genuinely glad to welcome the Bill and we will do everything we can to assist in every way its speedy passage to the Statute Book, for the reasons the Joint Parliamentary Secretary indicated.
It is appropriate that I should extend congratulations to the right hon. Lady the Minister for her success in having got the Bill before the House so quickly because we know the extent to which she has been personally interested in this subject for many years. We can congratulate her as well on the fact that while the Bill does not positively simplify our understanding of the problem, it does not seem to make it much more complicated than it was. We therefore welcome the undertaking given by the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the effect that a consolidating Measure will shortly be introduced. I join with him in paying tribute to the officials in his Department for the immense amount of work which must have gone into the preparation of the Bill and to the members and officials of the Workmen's Compensation Supplementation Board who must have played a great part in the shaping of it.
I was glad that the Parliamentary Secretary went out of his way to make plain that this Bill is part of a long-continuing process in which both sides of the House have played a part. It began with the 1946 Act, and there was another Measure in 1951. Then a number of Measures were introduced by the previous Government, often in response to suggestions


made by the then Opposition. My right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) was one of those who introduced an earlier Bill. I am glad to see my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Sharples) is in his place, because he introduced the 1961 Bill.
The position was that by 1963 more than 17,000 beneficiaries were covered by Measures then on the Statute Book, and this Bill is the logical conclusion of this process. It springs from the inquiry set in train by the present Government after representations made to my right hon. Friend in July of last year. As the Parliamentary Secretary says, it fills most of the gaps in a way that we welcome. I would, perhaps, be in danger of being misunderstood if I said that the Government had succeeded in abolishing the pre-accident wives, but they seem to have succeeded in abolishing most of the anomalies arising from the existence of the pre-accident wives, except where the anomaly is advantageous to the claimant himself.
The Government also seem to have gone as far as seems possible in moving away from workmen's compensation as a system. The right hon. Lady will remember that her right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster asked many years ago whether we were to continue for the rest of our lives with the complications of the workmen's compensation system. It rather looks as though we shall have to do so but, equally, this Bill, in its departure from the old workmen's compensation earnings rule, takes away most of its unattractive aspects.
The right hon. Lady tried, in her own Bill, to get away from the workmen's compensation system of assessment of disability. The workmen's compensation system assesses actual disability in terms of loss of earnings, whereas the present system deals in terms of loss of faculty. In her Bill in 1954 the right hon. Lady tried to jump from the one to the other, although that involved a great deal of reclassification, fresh boards, and so on. This Bill seems to provide a simpler way of arriving at the answer, and I assume that the attempt to depart from that part of the workmen's compensation system has been abandoned; and that this is the best way,

and it seems so to me, of getting over the hurdle.
One matter with which the Parliamentary Secretary did not deal was the cost of this Measure—although he dealt with so much else that one does not criticise him for that. The cost is to fall on the Industrial Injuries Fund. Perhaps I may be allowed to welcome that part of the Bill as well, but the right hon. Lady, 'way back—and this is not a matter on which one wants to draw too heavily from history—suggested that it should, perhaps, have had to come from the employers and the insurers, or even the Exchequer, and was then doubtful about the wisdom of putting the burden on the Industrial Injuries Fund.
I cannot see any alternative. From the recent Report of the Government Actuary on the state of the Fund, it looks as though the contributions currently coming in are little more than is necessary to keep the fund in balance well into the 'seventies. I take it that the Bill will not affect the validity of that calculation, but it will be interesting to know just how much it will cost, and how it will affect the Fund.
We quite accept the explanation of the Parliamentary Secretary about the difficulty of doing anything about "the latents". His explanation was so clear as to make me see the reason for excluding those whose compensation is less than 5s. His explanation also satisfied me on the point that for the future we are not to have separate Bills of this kind to improve the position of people dealt with under these schemes, but that there will be automatic review as a result of Clause 4(1,b).
Looking further ahead into different territory, all hon. Members have been aware that one category of people who have always been excluded from help are those who settled for lump-sum compensation before these Measures started. A sub-category particularly adversely affected are those who settled for lumpsum compensation on a percentage basis because of the bankruptcy or business failure of some of the firms involved. It is right to remember that many years ago my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham (Sir G. Nicholson) introduced a Bill making provision for compulsory insurance, at least in the coal mining industry. But the problem remained,


though it may not be precisely within the right hon. Lady's responsibility. Still less does it arise in this Bill.
As will be known, there are still situations in which Common Law liability is involved; accidents arising, and someone with a perfectly good claim for substantial damages finding that the claim is quite unsatisfiable because the employer is not insured in respect of Common Law liability.
I can remember the particularly tragic case of a girl in the laundry industry who had lost virtually all the ringers of both hands. She was obliged to accept in compensation a very much smaller sum than was proper, if only to ensure that the business that was liable to pay her the money remained in business. It was, indeed, a case of not killing the goose that laid the somewhat tawdry golden egg.
This is a difficult problem, but perhaps we can be told whether the right hon. Lady or any of her colleagues is giving consideration to making compulsory insurance for employers' liability under the lump-sum Common Law damages system, which is now so important, so as to prevent difficulties of that kind.
I will not detain the House longer on this complex and technical measure. We on this side are extremely glad to welcome it, and I renew my assurance that we shall give it all possible help on to the Statute Book. It has often been said, and it is perfectly true, that the best guide to the standard of civilisation of an community is the standard of care and compassion it shows to those who are casualties of the industrial process which gives us all the wealth and prosperity we enjoy. It is therefore important and right that Measures like this—small, detailed and technical though they are—should be continually introduced by Governments of whatever colour, and be welcomed with equal warmth on both sides of the House.

1.50 p.m.

Mr. Bernard Taylor: We have had a most interesting speech from the hon. and learned Member for Bebington (Mr. Howe) born out of his experience in the Welsh valleys, as he intimated. He raised two very interesting points and I am sure my right hon. Friend the Minister will take notice of them. The

first dealt with those who have commuted. We have heard of the experience of men who have taken lump sums and their liabilities have increased as the years have gone by. The hon. and learned Member also raised an interesting point about employers who had gone bankrupt and even those who were prepared to commute did not get anything like the amount they would have had but for the financial position of the firm concerned. I join the hon. and learned Member in hoping that the Minister will look at those two important points and will be able to say something about them.
As has been indicated by the two speeches we have heard this afternoon this is by no means the first debate in the House on this important topic. In the past 15 years particularly the question of accidents and industrial disease has been debated many times. I think I can say with due modesty that on every occasion I have been present. The number of debates which has taken place on this question leads to the conclusion that the problem of the pre-1948 compensation cases has become almost a hardy annual. Debates have been held, Questions have been asked, speeches have been made and there have been deputations to successive Ministers since 1945 on this question.
Even more important, attention to the problem has not been entirely focused in this House but also outside where bodies such as the Trades Union Congress, and especially the National Union of Mine-workers, have considered it. The percentage of accidents and suffering from industrial disease is greater in coalmining than in any other industry. We pay compliments to the Trades Union Congress and the National Union of Mineworkers for the interest they have taken over the years, not only in the general question of workmen's compensation and industrial injuries but particularly in cases of people injured before 1948.
In spite of the multiplicity of approaches to this problem, I re-echo what my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary and the hon. and learned Member for Bebington said. To say that nothing has been done in the past 15 or 16 years in this regard would be entirely wrong. Quite a a lot has been done. The "totals" have been provided for and the time-barred cases, particularly with reference to


pneumoconiosis. We must admit that even the polishers have had benefits under the Workmen's Compensation Act supplemented. We should say freely and honestly that each successive Government have had a hand in this business since 1945.
In the main, the particularly disabled cases are the subject of our debate today. They have had less than the maximum rates of compensation. It is not news to anyone interested in this subject that they have had no provision made in the form of supplement. The position is serious because it is not only cases immediately prior to 1948 with which we are concerned but those beyond 1924, and many of these cases are getting very old. Up to now they have been left out completely from any supplement while some of the other cases, the "totals" and time-barred disease cases, have been able to participate in supplements. It has been said by a number of hon. Members in past debates that all these partial cases on less than maximum rates are forgotten men. I must have said that myself in previous debates. I repeat that unless something is done quickly because of the incidence of the calendar it will be too late.
Year by year the partial cases are diminishing. They get fewer as each year passes. I looked up some statistics provided by the National Union of Mine-workers and I was staggered to see the size of the numbers of those who drop out every year from the category of partials on compensation. The deduction I made from those statistics was that in coalmining alone in the last two years the average rate was about 570 a year. I deduct from those figures that in industry as a whole there were something in the neighbourhood of 1,000 a year. If it is necessary to draw the attention of the Minister to the fact, I point out that time is not on our side in this respect and something must be done in these circumstances.
I have mentioned only a few of the matters which could be referred to in a debate of this kind. Much more could be said about the degree of disability and hardship and suffering consequent upon these men having accidents many years ago, but I feel sure that my hon. Friends will fill in any gaps that I have left. I turn to the Bill and join the Parliamentary Secretary and the hon. and learned Member in congratulations to the present

Minister of Pensions and National Insurance, my right hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison). It is well known, and this is an appropriate occasion to mention it, that she is the daughter of a coalminer. She came from an area which provided her with a mining background. Because of that it is no exaggeration to say, as I say sincerely, that the problems of industrial accident and disease exercised her mind and evoked her sympathies long before she became the Minister.
I have one reservation, to which I will refer later. I say immediately that this is quite a good Bill. I am disappointed that it does not embrace the "latents". I was rather intrigued at the figure of 200,000 "latents" given by my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary. I believe this is a vastly exaggerated figure. I have no evidence to prove this, except that about two years ago, in reply to a Question from me asking what was the number of "latents", the right hon. Member for Bridlington (Mr. Wood), who was then Minister of Pensions and National Insurance, said that the best estimate he could make was about 50,000. It might be more than 50,000, but I do not believe it is in the neighbourhood of 200,000.

The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance (Miss Margaret Herbison): It was as a result of the inquiry we have been holding to bring this Measure forward that we got the figure. It might be anything around 200,000.

Mr. Taylor: I could not dispute that figure, but I am staggered that it is so high. Whether it is 50,000, 100,000 or 200,000, I am disappointed that the latents are not included in the Bill. I hope that in reply my right hon. Friend the Minister will be able to tell the House that she has not dismissed this problem entirely and that the Bill, admirable though it is, is not the end of the road.
Paragraphs (a) and (b) of the Explanatory Memorandum explain the provisions with regard to the totally disabled. I am delighted that the pre-1924s are to be put on the same basis as the post-19248. This should be of great comfort to many people.
I think this point has been cleared up, but perhaps my right hon. Friend will re-emphasise it when she replies. In


future if industrial injury benefits are increased—let us take the 100 per cent. disabled—would the benefit of the pre-1948 totally disabled automatically be increased, as it is now, up to the rate of 100 per cent. in the Industrial Injuries Act?
Paragraph (c) is the fly in the ointment. It is a very big fly indeed and it spoils an otherwise admirable little Bill. I refer to the statement:
for all temporarily or partially incapacitated persons entitled to 5s. a week or more …
Why divide the "partials" into two categories, those who are getting more than 5s. and those getting less than 5s.? I put it as strongly as this: why fix a floor at all? Why deny to those receiving the lesser benefit in the form of workmen's compensation any benefit at all under the Bill?
We have heard something about the number of "latents". Why put those under 5s. into the "latent" category, because that is what this proposal does? It makes confusion worse confounded. I know of "partial" cases receiving less than 5s. a week who have a much greater disability than those receiving more than 5s. a week, even up to the maximum of 50s.
What is the reason for this arbitrary figure? Is it cost? I do not think it can be that. Is it the technicalities of administration? Despite all my praise for this admirable little Bill, I am sorely disappointed with this part of it. It smells a little of discrimination, for which there is no justification. I say, with all the modesty I can, that with this provision in the Bill I do not relish the prospect of meeting many of my constituents who are "partials" receiving less than 5s. a week. Their language will be much stronger than the language I am now using. There will be bitterness, frustration and disappointment amongst those who are receiving less than 5s. a week.
I will give an example to emphasise my point. In an isolated mining community two men may be living as neighbours. This is not a fantastic example, nor is it exaggerated. Both have had an accident. One has been unlucky once, in having the accident. He is getting a decent rate of partial benefit. The other might have been unlucky twice—once

in having the accident and again in having it at a time when short-time work was in operation and wages were low, accounting for the difference between the benefit these two men receive. Let us say that one receives 5s. a week. Under the Bill he is in. His next-door neighbour may be getting only 4s. l1d.—1d. less. He is out. When lines of this kind are drawn, it is very dangerous indeed.
I ask the Minister not to spoil this ship for a halfpennyworth of tar. She should make it all-embracing and have a clean sweep for the "partials". If this is not done today, we shall have to have another bite at the cherry some day. If I were asked for my opinion on this point, I should make the floor Id. I am disappointed that the "latents" are not included, but the exclusion of some of the "partials" below 5s. passes my comprehension. It is a serious matter. If nothing is done about it, the Minister will have missed a great opportunity. It has appeared to be an intractable problem for the past 15 or 16 years, but so soon after taking office as Minister my right hon. Friend has faced up to the problem of the "partials ". Having brushed aside—not exclusively, but to a certain extent—what was regarded by her predecessors as something which was sacrosanct, namely, the two-thirds difference between pre- and post-accident earnings, I ask her to complete the job. It can be done, and it should be done.
I hope, Mr. Speaker, that I am not speaking too long, but I should like to raise one final point. My hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary indicated that we might have to wait a little while before the scheme comes before us. It looks as if it may be a little complicated. I should like to know whether the existing "partials" who are receiving more than £2 7s. 6d., which is the ceiling in this Bill, will participate in any of the supplements.
With the reservation that I have made, and in the hope that the omissions from the Bill of the under-5s. will be remedied, I wholeheartedly welcome the Bill.

2.1 p.m.

Mr. Richard Sharples: It is a great pleasure indeed to follow the hon. Member for Mansfield


(Mr. Bernard Taylor). He speaks with great knowledge of and feeling for these matters. He mentioned that the task of remedying the position of the old cases had been a continuing process under successive Governments. What he did not refer to, naturally, was the part which he himself played when occupying the position now held by the hon. Member for Leek (Mr. Harold Davies) and once held by myself, and the contribution which he made to thinking on this very difficult and complex subject.
One hon. Member whom we miss from this debate because of his other preoccupations and duties is the hon. Member for Bedwellty (Mr. Finch). I know that when I had responsibility for these matters I would often go and seek the advice and help of the hon. Member for Bedwellty who had a mass of knowledge on the whole subject.
I should like also to congratulate the hon. Member for Leek on introducing the Bill. Speaking from experience, I believe there is hardly any greater satisfaction that an hon. Member can have than to be allowed to introduce a Bill of this kind. I am sure we all appreciate the very clear manner in which he outlined its most complex provisions. I know that even with the help of the most able staff at the Ministry I have found it extremely difficult to master all the complexities involved.
The Explanatory and Financial Memorandum to the Bill states that it
is intended to simplify the complex structure of supplementary allowances.…
I read the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum and I also read the Bill. After doing so, I went to the Library and got a copy of the Press notice which was of considerable assistance to me.
I wish to congratulate the right hon. Lady the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance and the Joint Parliamentary Secretary upon having found a solution to a problem which has been of concern to many of us and to which previously no satisfactory solution had been found. I refer to bringing together, so far as is possible, the old workmen's compensation cases and the new cases covered under the Industrial Injuries Act. I realise that difficulties still remain, but the formula which has been found and

the solution contained in this Bill constitute probably as good a solution as can be found, making allowance for all that has gone before and for the complete difference in concept of the two schemes. This is a matter on which the Government certainly deserve congratulations.
I have only one or two points to raise about the Bill itself. I understood from the Joint Parliamentary Secretary that the vast majority of the old workmen's compensation cases would be covered by this Bill. There are, I believe, a small number of "totals" who will not be included in the Bill, for reasons which the hon. Gentleman explained very clearly and which I understand. What I am not quite clear about is this: these "totals", although not included in the Bill, of course suffer from the loss in the value of money which has occurred since the last Bill raising the supplements was introduced. I am wondering whether it is contemplated that any provision should be made at least to bring up the supplements of those who will not benefit otherwise from the Bill to make up for the loss in the value of money which has occurred since the supplements were last raised.
My second question is about the administration of the major incapacity allowance. The criteria for entitlement to the major incapacity allowance is contained in Clause 1(5) which refers to a person being
totally incapable of work and likely to remain so incapable for a considerable period.
I think the House will be grateful for a little further explanation of how those words are to be administered. What is to be the method of making a claim? Will it be entirely the responsibility of the Workmen's Compensation Board to assess these claims? It is, I know, a complex and difficult matter, but I am not quite clear from the explanations which we have had whether all "totals", except for the very small minority referred to by the Parliamentary Secretary, will be covered. It would be helpful to have a little further explanation about that.
Another point that I should like to raise concerns the "partials". I am sure it is right that we should go further than


including simply the "partials" on maximum as we have done hitherto. The hon. Gentleman said that probably some 10,000 additional "partials" would now be entitled to compensation under the new scheme. I shall be grateful if the Minister will say how those additional 10,000 "partials" are to be notified of their rights and what steps are going to be taken to bring them into the scheme. I am sure the trade unions and other bodies will play a great part in this, but we should like to have a reassurance about it.
The other point I wish to raise relates to a matter which has already been raised in the debate concerning those who have commuted their pensions for one reason or another. I hope that the right hon. Lady will be able to say something about that, although I appreciate from my own experience that it is an extremely difficult problem and one which we were not able to solve.
My final point is on the timing. I appreciate the complex and difficult operations involved in implementing a Measure of this kind. The Joint Parliamentary Secretary said something about the measures that must be taken to bring the Bill into operation as soon as possible. I hope very much that even during the passage of the Bill through the House it will be possible to take some of the preliminary measures, which are many and complex, at least to the extent of setting in hand an inquiry about those who are being brought into the scheme for the first time. I echo the words of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bebington (Mr. Howe) that we on this side of the House congratulate the Government on bringing in the Bill, and we shall certainly do all we can to assist its passage as quickly as possible.

2.21 p.m.

Mr. Thomas Swain: Since 1948, and perhaps even years before that, we have been making representations to successive Ministers of Pensions and National Insurance to have benefits provided for those who are commonly called "part-difference" men. At long last we have a Minister who has the courage and tenacity to introduce a Bill which will do that very thing. I should like to add my own congratulations to those already accorded to the

Minister and her colleagues on bringing the Bill forward so early in the new Session. This is a good Bill, with one main exception, with which I will deal in a moment.
The class of men for which the Bill caters have been over the years the poorest of a very poor group in the industrial community. These men received their injuries as a result of accidents in industry when wages were very low and short-time was the rule rather than the exception. Pre-accident earnings were the criteria used for fixing part-difference compensation payments. At a result, no matter how serious or permanent the injuries were, in most cases the partial benefit was very low.
I should like to take up the word "token" which was used by the Joint Parliamentary Secretary. My hon. Friend said that for people below the 5s. mark there were token payments to keep them on the books for compensation purposes, but in 21 years' experience in the coalfield, negotiating on behalf of the men, I never found a case where any man was kept on the books by a token payment for compensation purposes. The old pre-1937 coal owners got rid of their responsibilities the very moment wages were increased. It is proof of that that when wages began to be increased immediately after the commencement of the war there were many men in Derbyshire who were receiving 5s. or less compensation and in the first wage increase in 1941 and the Greene Award of 1942 the whole of that 5s. for partial compensation disappeared in the company and in the coalfield where I worked. We therefore collected immediately a great number of those whom we now term "latents". I therefore suggest to my hon. Friend that no employer was so charitable as to keep up his responsibilities for one moment longer than the law required of him.
As I have said, this is a very good Bill, with one main exception which has already been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Mr. Bernard Taylor). This is in paragraph (c) of the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum which my hon. Friend quoted. I cannot see any justification for the 5s. base figure. I have searched through compensation law and I cannot find any precedent where a base figure


has been inserted in an Act for the purposes of assessment. I hope and trust that the base figure will be seriously looked at.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield has already quoted a perfect example with the differential in part-difference compensation at 2d., that is, the difference between 5s. 1d. and 4s. l1d. This proves beyond doubt the injustice of a figure of 5s. In the case which my hon. Friend mentioned the two people had sustained exactly the same injuries but the pre-accident earnings of one were slightly lower than those of the other and as a consequence he is now left out of the benefits payable under this Bill.
We made representations time and again to the last Government and we were always told that nothing could be done for these people, but what we have tried to get successive Governments to do is to create some equity in the compensation benefits payable to victims of accidents in the past. I hope that my right hon. Friend and her colleagues will take this suggestion back. I must reiterate what my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield said—that the only sensible base for the Clause is a base of 1d., assuming that it is not possible now to deal with the latents. If the base were 1d. it would be all-embracing and we would include all beneficiaries, down to 1d., under the present compensation law. If my right hon. Friend could provide for this I am sure that all industry and particularly all people on compensation would be very grateful to her.
I had a telephone conversation with my compensation agent the other day and he said that after reading the Bill his hair had turned white overnight because he had seen the base figure of 5s. in this Clause. The trade union compensation agents in my area are terribly worried about this base figure. They have impressed upon me the urgency of my right hon. Friend thinking again about it and seeing whether anything can be done. If anything can be done I am sure that she will do her best to cater for this group of people.
My other great disappointment is that the Bill does not cater for the "latents" I quite appreciate the tremendous difficulties which my right hon. Friend and her colleagues would have to face in picking up and bringing the "latents"

into a compensation Measure at this time. The problems are enormous. I would not dispute the figure of 200,000 which has been mentioned, but I am convinced that, if the categories were sorted out correctly, it would be nearer 60,000 than 200,000 for those who would benefit under a Bill. I speak with a fair amount of experience in these matters, and I think that that is probably right.
I shall not weary the House with figures, but here are two examples of "latents "both known to me personally. One of them had his accident at my own local colliery and still works there. He was a coalface worker and his accident occurred on 13th December, 1937. Both these examples come from the time when wages were comparatively low just before the war. The accident resulted in the amputation of his left hand above the wrist.
He is now on light work. In 1963, he received only occasionally any part-difference, and a very small part-difference at that. Under the Industrial Injuries Act, his benefits at this moment, taking as the criterion the only other cases of comparable injury, would be a disability pension of 60 per cent., that is, 81s., colliery supplement of 27s., and special hardship allowance of 54s.—a total benefit of £7 2s. Because he had his accident at that unfortunate time when wages were low, that man is not in receipt of a penny compensation for the serious permanent injury he received.
My other example is even more far-reaching. An underground worker at Alfreton Colliery in Derbyshire had an accident on 10th August,, 1939, resulting in a fractured leg and amputation of the left arm. The House will agree that those are very serious injuries. He returned to work as a telephone operator underground. He is in receipt of no part-difference, and he is only 59 now. Under the New Act, again using the same criterion, his assessment would be 90 per cent., that is, £6 1s. 6d., with a colliery supplement of 40s. 6d. and special hardship allowance of 24s., according to his scale—a total of more than £9 a week benefit. Up to this moment of time, he has not drawn a penny benefit under the old compensation law.
These two examples prove beyond doubt that there is grave need to look seriously at the problem of the "latents,"


the poorest of the poor group in our industrial set-up. I could quote many more examples, but the two I have given serve to show that these men are the real victims of bad compensation laws in the past. At long last, we have before us a Bill which, though it will not correct things completely, will assist them greatly in their lives.
I sincerely hope that my right hon. Friend and her colleagues will soon be able to tell the House that they can do something for the "latents" who—I say it again—are in a serious plight. I must take issue with my hon. Friend when he suggests that there are only a few of them suffering hardship. I could bring him a file as big as the Dispatch Box of cases in my own county all involving people who are suffering grave hardship as a result of permanent injury but who are receiving no compensation at all.
I trust that my right hon. Friend will bear in mind what we have said on this matter and assure us that she will look again at the 5s. base, and I reiterate my hope that she will very soon be able to tell us that she is doing something about the latents.

2.35 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Probert: I was interested in the remarks made by the Minister of Education and the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hands-worth (Sir E. Boyle) in discussing the Teachers' Superannuation Bill earlier this morning. The Minister said that the subject was tedious and dry as dust, and he went on to describe the human problems involved. The right hon. Member for Handsworth said that it was not a subject which attracted the attention of the Press. All hon. and right hon. Members present now will agree, with no disrespect to the Minister of Education, that his remarks would be more appropriate to this subject than to the one he was discussing then.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leek (Mr. Harold Davies) for the admirable way in which, as Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry, he introduced this difficult subject. I extend my congratulations to the hon. and

learned Member for Bebington (Mr. Howe), who spoke so admirably and, obviously, was influenced by the experience which he, like me, had of the valleys in South Wales. All speakers, with the possible exception of the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Sharples)—I mean no disrespect to him because, after his experience in the Department, he has been much influenced by what he learned there—have been influenced by our experiences in the coal mining industry. I say at once that not only do I represent constituents in the coal-mining industry, but the union to which I belong, the Transport and General Workers' Union, is closely involved in this subject because it is not only in mining that these questions arise.
No one who has been a Member of the House for ten years or more can fail to be pleased at the presentation of the Bill. I know that I do not speak for this side alone when I say that. Congratulations have come from the other side as well. I must add that, while we were dissatisfied, during the years I have been a Member, with what was done in the cases which have been put forward time and time again, I have been grateful for what was done by the previous Government through the Parliamentary Secretaries and Ministers of Pensions and National Insurance. I shall touch on that again later.
All my hon. Friends present can recall occasion after occasion when we have got to our feet in the Chamber and exposed some of the anomalies which have arisen as a result of the different approach to industrial injuries and diseases initiated by the legislation of 1946. A fundamental change took place then and the criterion of loss of earnings was replaced by that of loss of earning power. I shall not weary the House by dealing with the problems raised by the pre-1946 legislation, save to point out that one of the gravest faults was that of retrospection, when one had to calculate backwards, as it were, in an almost hypothetical situation, in order to assess what was due to a person under the Workmen's Compensation Acts. The procedure was quite farcical.
No one with any knowledge of the subject will wish to go back to the old yardstick of loss of earnings, but the


difference of treatment thrown up by the initiation of the 1946 and 1948 legislation itself brought about great hardship because of the disparity of treatment. This is the sort of anomaly which has worried successive Governments since 1950. For years we have been told by successive Ministers—and I say this in no disparaging sense—that the two systems could not be mixed, that one could not be taken over by the other, that the Industrial Injuries Fund could not be held liable for the financial obligations of employers and insurance companies and that there was an important issue of principle.
Of course there is an important issue of principle here, but perhaps I differ here, in part at least, from hon. Members opposite. The important difference of principle as we saw it on our side of the House was that, as a result of the introduction of new legislation, we had two sets of people suffering from industrial injury or disease but being treated differently according to whether they came under the 1946 Act and subsequent legislation or under the workmen's compensation legislation. We had the farcical position of people in the same country receiving entirely different treatment. As many of us know, a man could be enjoying benefits under one set of legislation when his next-door neighbour received much lower benefits under workmen's compensation provisions. We thought that this was wrong and that this was the issue of principle.
Nevertheless, let it be said straight away that the principles have been breached by Ministers in the Tory Administrations which preceded this, and in our opinion quite rightly breached. On one occasion the then Minister of Pensions, the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter), defended his action in breaching these principles. In 1956 he said:
I stress that, because I will probably carry the House with me in saying that we ought not to put on the Industrial Injuries Fund —that is to say the contributors to that Fund —a charge in respect of an injury not within the scope of that Fund, except where we are really satisfied that some real hardship or real injustice arises. In other words, we ought not to do this merely to obtain exact symmetry or equality, but only where there is a point of substance."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th May, 1956; Vol. 552, c. 1912.]

He went on to do precisely what he was warning us against, and he carried the House with him. We certainly approved of his action. However much he tried to cloud his action with such sophistries—and I do not say this in any unkind way—the truth was that the Industrial Injuries Fund was being asked to support the increase being given to the categories then covered by the proposal. Such action may have appeared illogical, and perhaps any such action would be anathema to the Whitehall or bureaucratic mind. We were not worried by such illogicality, nor were we concerned with the anxieties of the bureaucratic mind. What we were concerned with, and what the Minister of Pensions was concerned with at the time, was that there was hardship and that something had to be done, however difficult it was, to put an end to that hardship. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames on the action which he took at that time and his hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam, then Parliamentary Secretary, for the action which he took later. They should not be ashamed of it in any way and should not be ashamed of offending the proprieties of Whitehall. I realise that the Minister's defence of his actions—and here again I am not being critical of him—arose from the fact that he knew full well that there were many more cases which were not covered by the proposals.
It was a proud moment for my hon. and right hon. Friends when my right hon. Friend the Minister of Pensions presented the Bill. As has been said previously, and, indeed, quite graciously by hon. Members opposite, she has been a worthy champion of this cause for many years, as she has shown us repeatedly in her efforts to bring about improvements. I am not a lawyer. I know of no more difficult piece of legislation than that dealing with workmen's compensation. The impact of the Workmen's Compensation Act upon the social insurance Acts which followed 1946 created many anomalies. This is the cause of the present trouble. I congratulate the Minister on having had the courage to deal with it—I am not making a political point because this has been referred to by hon. Members opposite—-so very early in this Parliament and about


12 months after having taken office. I was encouraged to hear from the Parliamentary Secretary that in the autumn, immediately she took office, a fact-finding inquiry was set up to look into the matters with which we are dealing.
The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam referred to the first paragraph of the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum. It states that this Bill
is intended to simplify the complex structure of supplementary allowances and benefits for such persons provided by several enactments passed since 1948.
Like the hon. Member, I felt that we were about to be given some elucidation of this very difficult subject, but I must confess straight away that I have not found it very simple, except—and here again I congratulate my hon. Friend— that the Parliamentary Secretary helped to elucidate many points. Whether the Bill will succeed to any degree in consolidating the previous Measures I do not know, but this will be revealed in Committee. My right hon. Friend, again, is to be congratulated on having attempted to do this.
I wish to make two final points of complaint. First, I must add my word of criticism, if that is the right word, about the floor of 5s. described in Clause 1(3). I wish to be brief, but I want to appeal to my right hon. Friend to look again at this matter. I do not think that there can be as many people involved as all that, and it is tragic to consider that this figure is decreasing. The Bill is to some extent a consolidating Measure. Why not, therefore, bring in this category at once and make the consolidation complete.
In the last point which I wish to make I am encouraged by the support of the hon. Member for Bebington (Mr. Howe) and of my hon. Friends for a class of people who provide a problem which is almost intractable—the problem of those who have commuted their claims. It is not generally appreciated that the conditions in which many of these people were forced to commute their claims were such that it was virtually Hobson's choice. I will not weary the House with details and examples of the many people who commuted their claims for sums of £100, £200 or £250 in very difficult days indeed.
I know that my right hon. Friend and her Parliamentary Secretary are fully aware of this type of case and that I do not have to persuade her of the circumstances and indeed the claims of these unfortunate people upon her. What makes the position so difficult is their lack of legal status. They are virtually no longer anyone's responsibility. May I ask my right hon. Friend whether it is possible to set up a fact-finding inquiry into this category of person, to find out exactly how many of them there are, how they can be classified into categories, such categories indicating the amount paid to them and their present condition. I do not know how easy or difficult that would be, but I presume that it would be very difficult. At least something should be done to discover the true situation.
Having made those two points, I conclude by once more offering my most sincere congratulations to my right hon. Friend on a small but excellent and worthy Measure.

2.50 p.m.

Mr. Edwin Wainwright: I have listened with great attention to the debate and have enjoyed it immensely. But I am always perturbed when both sides of the House seem to be in amicable agreement on an issue, for I feel that perhaps there is something wrong with the issue or that the House has not carried out its responsibilities in the past as it should have done.
I have been reading what has happened in the past on this problem and have been surprised at the number of occasions when both sides of the House have talked about assimilation of latent cases within industrial injuries provisions. May I add that I have been no more pleased in this debate than to hear the hon. and learned Member for Bebington (Mr. Howe) on his first occasion from the Front Bench. He gave a very cogent and warm speech. I appreciate most sincerely his welcome of the Bill.
My hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary did his best to explain the intricacies of the Bill, and I congratulate him upon it I hope that the Government will take every opportunity of unwinding the workmen's compensation legislation and making it less complicated and easier to understand. Every time the Government


bring in a Measure that does not remove workmen's compensation in its entirety, more confusion is created as between the Workmen's Compensation Acts and the Industrial Injuries Acts. I have had much experience of this, and I think that my right hon. Friend the Minister and my right hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary have not realised that there will be numerous inquiries from people uncertain as to whether or not they are to receive benefits under this Bill and who will not be satisfied that they should not be included in the Bill if in fact it excludes them.
Undoubtedly the Workmen's Compensation Acts were based on a pernicious principle. They have played an important part in destroying the happiness and welfare of many injured individuals and their families, including interfering with the future of the children. The Acts have proved iniquitous in practice and have caused misery to many. The serious injury or death of a man has resulted in the ruin or in the stunting of the lives of every member of his family. Every one of us can quote the cases of family after family whose future has been impaired because of a serious accident and the lack of proper compensation.
The hon. Member for Bebington said that society is judged on how it treats the unfortunate persons who have sustained injury. Up to the 1948 Act, except for a few supplementary measures which came into operation during the war, our society was not one of which we could be proud in its treatment of injured men.
These cases will be greatly affected by the Bill. I take it for granted that the totaly disabled will continue to receive 100 per cent. disablement pension, like any person who is registered as totally disabled under present industrial injuries legislation. That is a great step forward. But when it comes to those partially disabled and on partial compensation I am not quite so happy. When I first read the Bill I thought the minimum was to be £2 2s. 6d. plus 5s. making £2 7s. 6d. Now I understand that the figure can be up to that amount, which means that some time later we shall have the issue raised again. I hope, therefore, that the figure will prove to be the full £2 7s. 6d.
If it is to be 5s. plus 5 s., although this is a step forward, it will not be recognised as something as beneficial as these people ought to have, considering the amount of time they have suffered from injury and lack of remuneration, which, of course, varies according to the degree of injury. I hope that my right hon. Friend can give us more help about these figures of rates of benefit.
Many people sustained their injuries under the old methods of working in the mines. This is one of the things that we have frequently been critical about. I remember cases at the colliery where I worked. Men who lost an eye or injured a hand were incapable of going back to coalface work. That system of working has been abolished. We changed to conventional mining, with men loading coal by hand on to a conveyor, and with different rates of remuneration.
The amount of wages in that method was higher than for a person who was injured in the 1920s or 1930s who was on partial compensation with his 2s. or 3s. a week, who soon found that as the systems were changed, his partial compensation diminished and then disappeared altogether. It is hard to convince men in that position that we are doing something for them.
By 1948, when the new Act was introduced, the system of work was changed again, from conventional to power loading, and we now have more men on partial compensation injured from conventional mining. Because wages and rates of remuneration had changed and it could not be proved that their injury was applicable to the kind of work they were doing at the time, they, too, have been slowly but surely ground down into latent cases. These are the kind of people that I was hoping the Bill would do something to assist.
Because of the lateness of the hour, I do not want to go into the intricacies of the Bill, but I must say a few words about the 5s. and the latent cases. I do not accept that it is impossible to cater for these people. I do not suggest that it is an easy task—I know that it is difficult —but if we are to prevent progress, if because of the difficulties we do not allow fairness to operate, justice will be long delayed in many more matters than simply these two instances.
With my hon. Friends, I cannot understand why the 5s. has been included in the Bill, except, possibly, for one reason. My right hon. Friend the Minister and her advisers may be of opinion that if a person on partial compensation must go down to the level suggested, there will be numerous applications from people who, having been on the latent side, will want to establish that they are receiving some partial compensation. I hope that this is not the reason. If, to prevent that kind of person making application, we fix the figure at 5s. because there is a gap between the penny and the 5s., that would mean trying to prevent fair play and justice for these people whom we want to help.
I hope that my right hon. Friend will bear in mind what has been said about this issue. I felt so strongly about it that I was inclined to criticise the Bill from this viewpoint, but I do not want, as some people do, to praise a Bill and then do my best to destroy it. The Bill itself is a good step forward, but we must not allow that step forward to be marred by something that we can overcome by being a little more generous.
Let me say something about the latent cases. When I looked at the Bill last week, I thought about some of the men at the colliery near where I live, and my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Swain) has referred to some cases. I have clearly in mind the case of a man who lost a leg in the early 'thirties when working underground on haulage. He is now in his late fifties. As he was over the age of 21 he was not allowed to apply for reassessment. Through their workmen's compensation board, the employers compelled this person, against the wishes of himself and his family, to work below ground in the mine. He refused for a long time and no compensation was payable. But eventually circumstances drove him into the mines and he worked in the pit bottom. Except for a very short time, that man has never had a penny since his accident, although his leg was amputated just below the knee. He wears a stump, for he has not taken advantage of modern facilities for providing artificial legs. He has now been told by the new management that he is not fit to work below and has to work on the surface, and I

have been informed that he has even been told that he has to wheel a barrow. How can anyone justify the treatment which this gentleman has received over the years to his satisfaction or that of any other decent citizen?
I have mentioned one case, but such cases are to be found throughout the country and not only in the mining industry. It is time that we moved forward from the attitude of 21st February, 1951, in our views on what ought to be done for men on workmen's compensation. It is no good saying that we ought to assimilate these men at some time. We are judged not by what we say, but by our actions and if we do not do something soon, it will be too late to do anything.
In spite of what I have said, I hope that my right hon. Friend will accept that I regard the Bill as a step forward. But I beg her and her Parliamentary Secretaries as quickly as possible to set in motion the steps which will allow these people in their latter few years to appreciate that we want to do something of practical help to them. If my right hon. Friend says that the time is not yet opportune, I shall not be able to agree with her as much as I would like on an issue of this kind. The Bill is a step in the right direction. Let us keep walking forward so that eventually we can assimilate into the Industrial Injuries Scheme all the men receiving workmen's compensation who want to be assimilated.

3.8 p.m.

Mr. W. R. van Straubenzee: I think the whole House feels that we have had a short but nevertheless very useful debate. Before he entered on the very serious and moving passages in his speech, the hon. Member for Dearne Valley (Mr. Wainwright) opened on a lighthearted note, as was entirely consistent with his character, of surprise that there was so wide a measure of agreement between both sides of the House, and he felt a vague sense of back bencher's unease that that was so. I would have thought that the second half of his speech gave the justification for the atmosphere of the House, and that that was the case through all the debates on this subject since 1951.
I cannot possibly claim—and I hope that the House will accept that I even speak on this matter with very considerable diffidence in the presence of so many who know so much about it—to have as much knowledge and experience as many hon. and right hon. Gentlemen, but in preparation for the debate and together with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bebington (Mr. Howe) I have read every debate on the subject on the Floor of the House since 1951.
I recall a happy phrase used in the debate on the very Bill that was mentioned by the hon. Member for Dearne Valley. That, he will remember, was introduced by the noble Lady, Baroness Summerskill, as she now is, and the principal Opposition spokesman on that occasion was my noble Friend, now Lord Ingleby. It is always very difficult to remember the camouflage that people assume in later years. Looking across the Floor of the House on that occasion at the noble Lady, and talking about the 1951 Bill—as it then was—he said:
It is, I think somewhat like its sponsor, the Minister. It is a modest Bill, it is a useful Bill, and it is a Bill which is pleasant to contemplate."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st February, 1951; Vol. 484, c. 1378–9.]
I am sure that I carry the House with me when I say that those in the House now have even more reason than did our predecessors to echo those sentiments.
As has been pointed out clearly, not least by the hon. Member for Dearne Valley, the fact that we are having this discussion at all, and that there have been so many previous discussions, has its ancestry in the decision of the present Secretary of State for Wales that the Workmen's Compensation Act provisions should be wound up, as they stood at that time, but that men receiving workmen's compensation were not to be absorbed into the Industrial Injuries Scheme.
I thought that it was symbolic of all this that there was a moment of time when the House was glad to welcome the right hon. Gentleman, who has many other duties, to listen to our discussions, and I would say to those who, drawing upon individual cases, have been understandably critical of Workmen's Compensation Act provisions, that it is possibly unwise to judge, with the judgment of 1965, provisions originally introduced

many years ago and, in their day, thought to be extremely enlightened. I have a feeling that if that judgment is applied to many of the things which we do today we shall, from whatever position we may occupy in future years—above or below —not find ourselves without criticism from our successors.
But those compensation provisions, applying as they did to a claim by a workman against his employer—the basis being the loss of earnings—were often a claim against an insurance company. I want to re-echo or to buttress the exceedingly powerful query raised and subsequently reiterated by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bebington on this aspect of the matter in respect of those people who have settled for lump sum payments in previous years, whose predicament attracts the anxieties of hon. Members on both sides of the House. We shall be grateful to learn from the Minister whether she has in mind proposals to deal with those people by means of this Bill, bearing in mind the limitations of her ministerial responsibility.
If hon. Members want to go further and deeper into the difficulties of completely absorbing the two schemes, a course which has been advocated in previous years, there are few better explanations of the difficulties than those set out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridlington (Mr. Wood) in the debate on 7th March, 1958. I do not propose to weary the House with a rehearsal of them, but they are very formidable, although over the years attitudes on both sides of the House have changed.
I have a particular liking for Clause 2. If I had to single out one aspect of the Bill which I would commend more than any other, this would be the one. It affects only a very small number of people, but, even for those who, like myself, have not been and make no claims to have been closely associated with the mining industry—from which these two diseases particularly derive—know, sometimes at firsthand, the misery and discomfort which they bring and, therefore, the greater advantage which will flow when the Bill, as we trust, becomes an Act.
But I should like to raise one question on Clause 3. The difficulty of our discussions on these matters is that, if we are not careful, we have a Committee


stage discussion, which is wholly inappropriate. Yet, as has frequently been said, these are highly complicated provisions and the Bill itself is a complicated one. However, my question can be put simply like this. I can understand why the Minister seeks power under Clause 3 to extinguish a right to an allowance under the Act. I can understand the need for adjusting rates where more than one is payable. I am sure that we all understand this.
I hope only that, when the scheme is drafted, the Minister and those whom she must, in such technical matters, necessarily lean upon will be particularly careful to make certain that the drafting is not such that, in the end, a very small number of people is actually penalised. It is so easy in these matters, when a right is extinguished, to find. because of the maze of drafting through which the skilled advisers have to find their way, that—completely inadvertently and with no one's intention: for purely legal reasons—somebody is actually worse off.
As a lawyer myself, I have a horror of anything going wrong in this way and a strong fellow feeling for those who would like to make all these matters simple, easy and straightforward to understand. I am certain that the lawyers would like to do that in this respect, although it must be said that there are other matters in which, if it were only realised how easy the law is, people would not employ lawyers.
The Joint Parliamentary Secretary, to whom I should like to pay a very warm tribute for the expert way in which he introduced the Bill, made a perfectly frank admission—which we do not for a moment hold against him—namely, that there was a measure of rough justice in all this. I accept that and I think that he in his turn—both from his present experience and from his previous experience as a back bench Member—will accept that whenever there is a measure of rough justice there is also a measure of anxiety and sometimes resentment on the part of those who find themselves just "outside the rough". There has been some reference to this point today.
If the Opposition are supporting a Bill, as they are today, some responsibility falls on Opposition Members too. If we are supporting rough justice, we must also

measure and accept the anxieties and, sometimes, resentments which result. Some of the problems were mentioned extremely cogently earlier. As a very junior hon. Member, I would add that I have read all the debates on this subject in the House since 1951, and I have not read one report in which the name of the hon. Member for Mansfield (Mr. Bernard Taylor) does not appear. He, if anyone, has the right to claim to have been absolutely consistent throughout in the representations which he has made to Governments of all colours.
I am equally certain that the House would like to know more from the Minister about the numbers of what are called "latents" who are in existence. I come fresh to this matter, but I do not recall the figure of 200,000 being mentioned previously. As the right hon. Lady explained in a helpful intervention, this arises from an inquiry which originated as a result of representations being made to my right hon. Friend the then Minister and continued later, but the House has not had a previous opportunity of going into the subject. That, of course, entitles the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to considerable respect for the argument which he adduced about the difficulty of lessening the complicated terms of the Bill.
I welcome the neat provision of Clause 1 (4,b).The House will be grateful for the way in which that has been drafted, linking the disablement rate and the much simpler provisions which flow from that in terms of the future movement of benefit.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Sharples) mentioned that the advantages of debates in the House is that they achieve publicity for the subjects being discussed. It may be that the subject matter today appears as dry as dust, as the hon. Member for Aberdare (Mr. Probert) pointed out when referring to the terms of the Bill from the technical point of view. This publicity is of advantage because it may enable a number of men who would not otherwise appreciate that they may have rights under the Bill to make the appropriate inquiries. I understand that those who are in touch with, for example, their unions will be well serviced in this respect. But it might be helpful if the


Minister would say what plans she has for making the provisions of the Bill more widely known. We would always regret if, through sheer inadvertence on our part, men who had entitlement to benefit lost the occasion for doing so, particularly since for so many of them time is running out.
I reiterate what was said by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beb-ington. The Opposition will do everything possible to assist the Minister in the passage of this legislation and in the appropriate examination of schemes made under it. However, if the Opposition appears, purely technically, at a later stage to be praying against something, that will, of course, be the only device at the disposal of my hon. Friends and I for giving publicity to any factor involved. That is well understood in the House but it is not always understood outside. With that purely technical reservation, the Minister may be certain that she will have the fullest assistance of the Opposition.
The number of persons concerned under the provisions of the Bill, taken against the population as a whole, is small. The size and importance of this legislation taken against some of the great national and international matters we debate may be considered by the cynic to be small and minimal. Nevertheless, its effects on the community—however small the section of the community and however unimportant any one member of that section may seem—are of great importance. It is when dealing with a subject of this nature that I believe that the House of Commons is at its best, and it is a privilege for all of us to take part in this type of debate.

3.25 p.m.

The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance (Miss Margaret Herbison): I am very grateful for the reception given to this Bill by both sides of the House. The hon. and learned Member for Bebington (Mr. Howe) deserves the congratulations of us all. I only wish that more people had been present to listen to him. He gave us his background, and in everything he said he showed that he had an understanding of and a sympathy for the men for whom we on this side have been so concerned, at least in my time in the House, for 20 years. I understand that

this is the first time the hon. and learned Gentleman has spoken from the Front Bench. I hope that we shall see him there often, and we look forward to his taking part in further debates involving the work of our Department.
He asked what the cost of the provisions of this Bill will be. We reckon that for a complete year the additional cost to the Industrial Injuries Fund will be around £1,140,000. He reminded me that at some time when I was on the Opposition benches I had said that this was a cost that the employers or the insurance world should carry. Looking back, I have no doubt that I would say that and, as has been mentioned today, other people took the same line, but my recollection is that I said that since we could not get those people to do so, the only other source from which we could get money to do justice to those whom we have in mind today was the Industrial Injuries Fund. That is the Fund we shall use to carry out the present provisions, and the Fund that has been used since 1951. Indeed, the special-hardship allowance and the constant-attendance allowance have been paid right from the inception of the Industrial Injuries Act in 1948.
I shall deal, first, with what are, perhaps, smaller questions, and then come to fundamental points raised on both sides of the Chamber. My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Mr. Bernard Taylor) who, at one time, was a Parliamentary Secretary in this Ministry, and who, in every debate on National Insurance, has played an important part and has benefited the House by his great wealth of experience in these matters, has today once again shown his concern for these men. He asked whether the totally incapacitated would in future be linked to the 100 per cent. industrial injuries. That is exactly what one of the provisions in this Bill does. It means that whenever there is an increase in the 100 per cent. rate for industrial injury, the totally incapacitated will benefit at the same rate.
My hon. Friend also asked whether any existing "partials" who are now receiving £2 7s. 6d. will get any increase under the Bill. They would not get any increase, but any who are getting £2 2s 6d. —and I do not need to explain this to my hon. Friend—will remain as they are; they will not lose 5s.
The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Sharples) asked who the totally incapacitated were who would not get any increase under the Bill. They are the men with the pre-accident wives—"pre-accident" seems an awful description; but men who had wives before they had their accident have 10s. more. To make it more clear, let me say that at the present time the 100 per cent. industrial injury payment is £6 15s. The man with the pre-accident wife already has £6 15s. —the extra 10s. The man without a pre-accident wife has only £6 5s., so that these men will benefit to the extent of 10s.
I think that covers most of the smaller questions that were raised on the Bill. I come now to the statements which have been made about lump sum payments and the "latents". My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, when moving the Second Reading, dealt fairly fully with the question of the "latents" and the difficulty presented to us in any attempt to do anything, at least at this stage, for them. There has been some doubt expressed about their number. I do not think anyone could have had any idea of the number until the inquiry was carried out. It seems from the inquiry that the number may be around 200,000, or even up to a quarter of a million, but we just do not know. We know that it is a much greater number than any of us had ever thought of before.
A question was raised about the lump sum for those who commuted compensation and perhaps had not got their due even in a lump sum because a firm went into liquidation. All of us, particularly those from industrial areas, will have heard the complaint time and again that even those not in that position received a lump sum payment under duress. They often accepted it because of hardship in their homes. I am glad that it is no longer the practice to commute a war disability pension into a lump sum, although there, of course, there was fairness in the amount given. From my own experience, I understand very fully the feelings of some hon. Members on either side of the House on the question concerning the man who commuted his compensation in favour of a lump sum payment.
The Parliamentary Secretary outlined the very serious difficulties and problems which face us in trying to deal with the

"latents", but the problems which would be presented in trying to deal with those who received lump sum payments would be even greater. We would have some difficulties and there would be added difficulties and problems if we wanted to do something for those cases. To give an example, how are the rights and wrongs of a case to be distinguished at this late stage without readjudication? If there is readjudication, the medical assessments are almost impracticable because there is complete lack of documentation in these cases. It is not that we have not looked both at the question of "latents" most seriously and at the lump sum cases most seriously, but at this stage we have not found a way in which to deal with any of these cases, even the most glaring of what in some instances my hon. Friends have called injustices.
I hope that once the provisions of this Bill are in operation we shall gradually gain experience in dealing with many of these matters. It may be that through that experience, which will take some time before it builds up, we might find some way of at least giving some help to the kind of cases which have been mentioned in this debate today. That is our intention at present.

Mr. Probert: Before my right hon. Friend leaves that point, can I take it from her that some form of inquiry has already been made into this, or that she will promise some inquiry in the future?

Miss Herbison: No. It is because of the inquiry we have already carried out that we can give the figure of around 200,000.

Mr. Probert: I mean as to the lump sum.

Miss Herbison: We have not carried out any inquiry in regard to commutation for lump sums, but we think that from the workings of this Bill when enacted we might be able to do something. I can assure my hon. Friend that if an inquiry is necessary we shall conduct one.
I want to issue this warning. All my hon. Friends will be aware of the amount of work that my Department is involved in at present, not only the work that has had to go into the preparation of this


small Bill, but the work involved in the preparation of the Bill which we hope to present just after the new year—the Bill dealing with earnings related benefits—and the work which is going into the general review. If we put any more work on to our people, I can see a breakdown occurring in the job that we are all anxious should be done. I give the assurance that we shall watch the workings of the provisions of the Bill most closely to see how it will help us in the future, particularly in dealing with the worst cases among the latents and perhaps—this is all I can say; I can give no guarantee today—with some of those who commuted their compensation for lump sums.

Mr. Wainwright: Can my right hon. Friend say whether any of those who commuted their compensation for lump sums are possibly included amongst those who filled in the forms which were sent out to make inquiries about the latent cases?

Miss Herbison: I could not give that information at the moment, but it is information which I will obtain and pass on.

Mr. Bernard Taylor: My right hon. Friend referred to lack of documentation in regard to those who have commuted. I think that all those who commuted had to go before the registrar of the county court for approval or otherwise. In that case there would be documentation.

Miss Herbison: My hon. Friend is quite right in saying that they went before the courts. When I speak of documentation, I mean specifically medical documentation, not registration of the lump sum payments.
I think my hon. Friends will now appreciate the difficulties facing us. I have never been one to say that because there are difficulties nothing will be done. My attitude has always been, if there are difficulties, that if it is humanly possible to overcome them we shall do so. It would be quite wrong of me in winding up this debate to tell my hon. Friends that in a very short period of time we can find solutions to all the problems they have raised this afternoon.
I come to the last point before I deal with the nature of the scheme and with

the publicity measures we shall use. My hon. Friends have expressed regret that the scheme is to be confined to men receiving 5s. a week compensation or more. I listened very carefully to everything that my hon. Friends said on this matter. I am always conscious of the first-hand information which they have on these matters. Like myself, they live in mining villages and they see their constituents every weekend and during the Recesses. Of course, I appreciate that this matter does not affect only miners. Some of my hon. Friends have raised the question of the man with 5s. 1d. and the man with 4s. l1d. There may also be cases of the man with 5s. 6d. and the man with 4s. 6d. I have been very impressed by the weight of the argument presented by my hon. Friends on this matter. I have to say, though, that a reduction in this figure raises formidable problems—I think my hon. Friends will understand this—because of the necessity to exclude the latent cases at this stage. That is why the 5s. limit was put in, to try to get some justice between what might be classed as the latents.

Mr. Swain: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Miss Herbison: I am dealing with a very important part of my speech and I would rather complete it.
I want to emphasise that a reduction in this figure raises formidable problems because of the necessity to exclude latent cases. However, I promise that I shall study this matter between now and the next stage of the Bill. Having looked at it previously and having listened to the representations that have been made, I think that I can go so far as to say that I am optimistic in the matter. However, I know my hon. Friends will appreciate that I cannot say any more than that at this stage.
Now I come to the question of the scheme. The House will be aware that the scheme will have to be presented in Regulations and that those Regulations will require an affirmative Resolution. Since they require an affirmative Resolution, an opportunity will be given to hon. Members on both sides of the House to raise any questions they wish. The Compensation Supplementation Board will be working out the scheme. The Board already has a great deal of knowledge in


this field, and I have no doubt that that knowledge will be of great assistance in getting the scheme off to a good start and enabling it to work smoothly. As has been said, there are rough edges, but as the scheme proceeds and we get more and more knowledge we trust that these rough edges will disappear.
The hon. Members for Sutton and Cheam and for Wokingham (Mr. van Straubenzee) asked 'how we can ensure that everyone who should benefit under the Bill will know about it. First of all, we hope there will be about 10,000 new awards. Those who already have an award will have no difficulty at all. For the 10,000 new awards we are planning to begin inquiries from employers for the further information needed about the existing cases—so that we should not have any difficulty with these—and we shall also ask certain large employers to assist us by identifying possible beneficiaries under the new provisions. We shall do this while the Bill is going through the House. In other words, we shall not wait until the Bill is on the Statute Book before the job is done.
I know that the National Coal Board will be one of the employers most involved but there are others, as has been said in the debate. I am quite certain that we shall get from the employers the same co-operation as we have had from them in getting the information that has made it possible to bring this Bill before the House. We will also see that as soon as the Royal Assent is received and a commencement Order is made, claim forms will be made available in local offices and also issued directly to prospective beneficiaries whose names and addresses have been supplied. I hope that these measures taken together will bring our Scheme before all those who will benefit from it.

Mr.Howe: The right hon. Lady has dealt very carefully with all but one of the points raised in the debate. Can I ask her to deal with the one she appears to have omitted, that is, my suggestion that the Government, though probably not her own Department, should look closely at the possibility of legislation for compulsory insurance in respect of common law claims so as to avoid some

of the hazards which have attended some compensation commutation cases?

Miss Herbison: The hon. and learned Member is quite right. This is not a matter for my Department, but it is a matter to which I understand some thought has already been given. I readily give the assurance that the hon. and learned Gentleman's comments will be passed on to the right quarter.
It was only in July, 1964, that my predecessor gave a promise to representatives from the T.U.C. that an inquiry would be started on the subject matter of the present Bill and here we are, a little over a year later, discussing the Second Reading. The credit goes to a number of people. It goes to the employers who have co-operated to a great extent in providing the information. It goes to the T.U.C. and the individual unions who have also worked very quickly in giving us the information which we desired to have from them. It is only because both sides of industry have co-operated so well that it has been possible for us to get this Measure before the House. But even with all that cooperation, like my hon. Friend I have also to thank the officials in the department in my Ministry who are dealing with this matter.
This was not an easy job. Even when the information was brought to them they had a great deal of meticulous work to do. I feel that they have done it very speedily and have brought forward what a number of people feel is a rather complicated Measure but one which in the end will simplify the comparisons between industrial injury cases and the old compensation cases.
I am glad that the Bill has had such an easy passage on Second Reading. I hope that we shall have the other stages of the Bill brought forward as quickly as possible, because we wish to have the Bill on the Statute Book before the Christmas Recess and we hope to be ready to bring these provisions into operation by the first week in March.
The Bill deals with a very human problem. All of us who know these cases realise that although the Bill affects only a small proportion of the population of these islands, many of those affected have been living under a sense of injustice since 1948, and for those 10,000


at least we hope that we shall have got rid of this sense of injustice. As for those for whom we have not been able to do anything in this Bill, we hope that the workings of its provisions in the future will help us to help them.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second Time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Fitch]

Committee upon Monday next.

WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION AND BENEFIT (AMENDMENT) [MONEY]

[Queen's Recommendation signified]

Considered in Committee under Standing Order No. 88 (Money Committees).

[Mr. RODERIC BOWEN in the Chair]

Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to amend the law with respect to the supplementation of workmen's compensation, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament, subject to the provision made by section 61 of the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act 1965 for reimbursement out of the Industrial Injuries Fund, of any increase attributable to that Act of the present Session in the expenses of the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance or any other Government department which are so payable under the said section 61 as applied by the Workmen's Compensation (Supplementation) Act 1951 or the Pneumoconiosis and Byssinosis Benefit Act 1951.—[Mr.Harold Davies]

Resolution to be reported.

Report to be received upon Monday next

EXPIRING LAWS CONTINUANCE BILL

Bill now standing committed to a Standing Committee committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Fitch]

Committee upon Monday next.

SPAIN (JOHN BALSON)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn,—[Mr. Fitch]

3.52 p.m.

Sir Richard Glyn: I am grateful for this opportunity to ventilate today a case which arises out of my constituency but which is of national interest and importance. Now that so many people, both young and old, travel abroad on British passports, it is more important than ever before that the Foreign Office should give them the protection to which they are legally entitled and help them and their relatives in the event of anything going wrong.
In the case of my constituent, John Richard Balson, the Foreign Office arrangements appeared to have broken down. It would not be appropriate for me to deal at length with what happened outside the jurisdiction, but the background to the case is that he was confined in a Spanish prison for 17 days, denied access to any lawyer or to the British Consul, his letters were intercepted, and he was prevented, after his release from prison, from returning to Britain for a further 34 days, making 51 days in all.
It would not be appropriate to raise today the legal implications of the Spanish law, of course, in which the Foreign Office is not at all involved, but it should be known that John Balson, who was a pupil at Wimborne Grammar School in my constituency, had won a travelling scholarship granted by the school governors as a result of which he was touring in North Africa. On returning from North Africa to join his parents in the South of France, he had to travel through Spain. He had to pass through Spain on his journey from North Africa to France, and it is wholly wrong to describe him as a visitor to Spain, as was done, unfortunately, in an answer to one of my Questions.
As he was passing through Spain, there was a difficulty about his railway ticket, which, apparently, though in order, did not satisfy the ticket collector. John knew no Spanish at all and could not understand what was being said to him, but he was removed from the train, ended up in police custody, and almost


immediately found himself in prison. There he was held, his letters being intercepted and his requests for a lawyer and for the British Consul being refused. He remained there, first in the local prison and later in Madrid, for 17 days. The letters which he wrote were posted nearly a month afterwards, after he had been released on bail.
When John failed to turn up, his parents waited in the South of France for four days and then reported his disappearance to the British Consul in Paris, who was most helpful and who took every possible step to see that if he turned up later, after his parents had gone, they should be informed. His parents then returned to England and approached the Foreign Office in London where, unfortunately, it was quite a different story. On 6th September the Foreign Office told them on the telephone that there was no cause for anxiety, that it was too soon for them to take any action, that no action was necessary and that if Mrs. Balson heard nothing more by the end of the week she was to ring them again.
By the end of the week Mrs. Balson was very worried. Her son was an experienced traveller. He had kept very close to his itinerary all through his travels in North Africa and he had written to her from every town in which he had stayed. All this she told the Foreign Office. When she telephoned the Foreign Office as arranged on 10th September he had been absent for ten days without any message or sign, and when the Foreign Office again told her that they were not prepared to take any action to help her, she was entirely dissatisfied. They told her to ring again on Monday, 13th, and said that they would see what they could do. This was so utterly different from the attitude of the British consular official in Paris that she was completely dissatisfied and went to the local police at Wimborne station and asked them to notify Interpol. There is a dispute as to whether they did.
On 15th September I received from her particulars of what had happened, and I immediately rang up the Foreign Office, who told me that they had made certain inquiries. I mention this because I think that it is important: they led me to suppose on the telephone that they

themselves had alerted Interpol. I mention this because it is so difficult to find out what the Foreign Office really did. I wonder whether they know what they had then done. Later that day I was told in another telephone message that they had not alerted Interpol but had told the police that Interpol might need to be alerted, which is rather different.
To finish the confusion about Interpol, in a recent television appearance on Southern Television in which the Balson family and I appeared, the commentator had been given to understand by a Foreign Office spokesman that the Foreign Office had informed Interpol as early as 13th September.
On 15th September they told me that they had not done so. I do not suppose we shall ever know what, in fact, the Foreign Office did, and I am not sure whether they themselves are certain about it. But we know that two things happened on 17th September—one good and one bad. The bad thing which happened was that Mr. Balson received a note from the Foreign Office asking him to acknowledge and confirm his oral undertaking made over the telephone to pay the Foreign Office the cost at current commercial rates of any telegrams or any telephone calls which the Foreign Office might send or make in connection with the tracing of his son. Up to that point the Foreign Office had been telling the Balsons that they had not done much about it because there was no need to do so, but in subsequent letters the Foreign Office told me that as early as 9th September they had rung up Madrid on the telephone and alerted them to John's disappearance. If Mr. Balson had signed this paper, which I am glad to say he did not, he could not possibly have known the expenditure he was letting himself in for or the expenditure which had been involved.
An accurate synopsis of the position as it stood then was that at the time the Foreign Office were telling the Balsons that there was no need for alarm and that they had not started searching, whereas they have told me in letters since then that they started searching on about 9th September. Which is the truth, I do not know. It was, however, unfortunate that if the Foreign Office began searching on the 9th, on the 11th and the 13th Mrs. Balson was told that there was no need


for alarm and that they could not see any reason for doing it. On the other hand, if the search was started on the 9th, it was equally unfortunate that the Foreign Office should put in writing to me what it did.

It being Four o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed. That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr.Fitch]

Sir Richard Glyn: I do not wish to labour the details of the inaccuracies in the Foreign Office story or the difficulties I have had in ascertaining what happened.
The second thing which happened on the 17th is without doubt. It is that John Balson was found languishing in a Spanish prison in Madrid as a result of a telegram which, I think I can say, he had smuggled out the prison two days before. Here again, there is a very great discrepancy about what happened.
I was told in writing that the reason why no action was taken on the telegram until the 17th was that it was not received by the British Consul in Madrid until the 17th. I have challenged this as a result of information from another source and I have now had it admitted that the consulate in Madrid received this telegram on the 16th. At what time is was received is still in dispute, but there is no doubt that the Consulate in Madrid had this telegram on the 16th from John Balson to say that he was in prison only a mile or two from the Consulate and that the Consulate took no steps either to release him or even to let him know that at long last one of his messages which he had bribed people to smuggle out of prison had reached safe hands. It was not until the following day that the consulate made contact with Mr. John Balson and arranged ultimately for his release.
An even more serious feature of this truly unfortunate case—which I am ventilating solely in the hope that my doing so will stop anything of the kind ever happening again—is that in one of my many telephone conversations with the department of the Foreign Office which had been charged with the duty of trying to find John Balson, I suggested that the Spanish Government must be under a duty to report to British Consuls whenever a British subject was arrested in Spain. I

was told that I was quite wrong in so thinking.
I set about, as far as a back-bench Member of this House can, trying to trace the international agreements with Spain, which, to say the least, is a fairly large job. Before I had got far with it, I was telephoned back by the Foreign Office and told that there had been a consultation, that they had come to the conclusion that I was right and that Spain was under a legal duty to report the arrest of British subjects in that country. There is no doubt whatever that under Article 26 of the Anglo-Spanish Consular Convention, the Spanish authorities have this duty.
It is most unfortunate that the department of the Foreign Office which had the duty to rescue British subjects arrested in this way did not know what the Spanish Government's legal responsibilities were, and this at a time when British subjects were being arrested in Spain almost at the rate of one a day. In the 33 days ending 22nd September last, which covered the period of John's arrest, 32 British subjects were arrested in Spain. In answer to a Question of mine on the Floor of the House, I was told that in only 20 cases did the Spanish authorities actually report these arrests, that in nine cases the consul got to hear about them and that in three or four cases the arrest was never reported. In these circumstances, it seems no less than alarming that the department of the Foreign Office charged with the duty of rescuing British subjects in this unfortunate position was not even aware of what the situation was in international law.
In his letter to me on 29th September, the Foreign Secretary frankly admitted that he was not, as he said, "Entirely satisfied" about the way in which this matter had been handled by the Foreign Office. I should like to think that that was a marked understatement because I think that he should have been deeply distressed and perturbed by the way in which his Department had behaved in this matter.
When I asked on the Floor of the House on 1st November what steps he was taking to make sure that this sort of thing would never happen again, the Foreign Secretary wholly ingnored that part of my question and merely offered,


in correspondence, to explain to me what had happened. I must put this right. The letter to which he referred was sent by one of the Ministers of State —the hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. Padley)—on 7th November, and all it said was that he would write to me as soon as the Foreign Office had completed its examination of what the hon. Gentleman described as "this serious case". I supposed, of course, that I should ultimately receive a written explanation.
On the contrary, all I got was a letter full of excuses, with no suggestion of contrition, or of improved methods, or of anything to be done to make things better—just excuses, which, I may add, I received after it was known that this debate was to take place. There was no offer to me of explanations. There was only the promise of an explanation which was never discharged.
There is another side to this case. Balson was a grammar school boy. His parents are not wealthy. They have been put to enormous expense which they can ill afford. I would first ask the Minister of State to assure the House that any oral agreement that Mr. Balson may have made to refund to the Foreign Office the cost of the telegrams and telephone calls will not be enforced. Mr. Balson was asked to sign a document but he has not done so. It refers to an oral agreement.
I plead with the Minister of State not to enforce an oral agreement. The Balsons —and it is right that this should be known—were forced to rely on the financial assistance of relatives to find the very large sum of bail that they had to deposit to get John out of prison. Although he has long since been released they have not yet had that money back. It is still in Spain. More hundreds of pounds had to be found to cover legal expenses.
I ask the Minister of State to assure the House that, if there was any undertaking by Mr. Balson to pay the cost of telegrams and telephone calls, it will not be enforced. I would like him to say whether there is any means, ex gratia or otherwise, by which the Foreign Office can help to ease the burden of these parents, who were guilty of nothing. It was not their fault that John won a

scholarship which involved travelling by himself. In any case he commited no offence known to English law. But they have been put to this crippling expense, part of which at least arises from the curious actions of the Foreign Office.
I wonder what would have happened if Mr. and Mrs. Balson had been unable to find the bail. Would John still be in prison? Are there any powers in the Department to find out these things in such cases? I ask the hon. Gentleman to see what he can do in this important case. The Foreign Office was wrong from the beginning in not taking adequate steps to find John Balson or, if it was taking them, of concealing the fact from his parents. It was wrong in not telling the parents what was happening. It was previously wrong in not knowing that Spain was legally liable and legally responsible for reporting to the Foreign Office the arrest of a British subject.
I maintain that the Foreign Secretary was wrong, was misguided, in not giving a more helpful answer to my question on 1st November when I asked him what he was going to do to make sure that this sort of thing never happened again. The British passport entitles a British citizen to full protection from the Foreign Office when travelling abroad. I hope that we shall hear that, from now on, British subjects travelling abroad, both old and young, are to receive the protection to which they are legally entitled and that nothing resembling the treatment of John Balson's family will ever happen again.

4.10 p.m.

The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. George Thomson): I personally welcome the opportunity provided by the hon. Member for Dorset, North (Sir Richard Glyn) to put before the House the facts of the unfortunate experience suffered by John Balson as they were seen through our eyes at the Foreign Office, and also to explain to hon. Members, and through them to the public, some of the risks involved in foreign travel and the realities about how far the Foreign Office can help for we have to face some facts about this matter.
The hon. Gentleman has stated very plainly the timetable of events and I will not try to cover the points which he has covered, except in so far as they are in


dispute. He mentioned the earlier happenings when John Balson's parents were in France and consulted our Consulate in Paris and then took up the story when they returned to this country.
On 6th September, the parents informed the Foreign Office in London that their son was still missing. The Foreign Office at that stage started preliminary inquiries and the Consular Department of the Foreign Office informed Her Majesty's Embassy in Madrid of John Balson's disappearance on 9th September. I think that that deals with one of the points of confusion which the hon. Ger.tleman raised.
On 13th September, since there was still no news, the Department followed this up with extensive inquiries by telephone and urgent telegrams in France, Spain and Morocco. On 16th September, we received confirmation of the youth's departure from Morocco to Spain on 28th August. On the afternoon of 16th September—and this is one of the important dates, as the hon. Gentleman said—the Embassy in Madrid received an unsigned and corrupt telegram in English which it traced back to the Carabanchel Prison.
This telegram was received too late in the afternoon to take action on it at that point, but permission to visit the prison was immediately sought and a visit was paid on the morning of 17th September. In the light of the facts, I do not think that the hon. Gentleman has a justifiable ground for complaint about the period of some hours which elapsed between the telegram being received and being deciphered and the visit being paid to John Balson.
Although I am only too anxious to deal with the difficulties in this matter, I thought that the hon. Gentleman was complaining a little unreasonably when he said that his first telephone call to the Foreign Office elicited the view that there was no binding obligation on the Spaniards under the Consular Convention and his complaint that an hour later this was corrected. I do not think that he can expect the Consular Department of the Foreign Office, with the kind of pressure that it is under during the tourist season, with many temporary workers, always to give accurate information, but there was a correction back to the hon.

Gentleman within an hour and, in face of the more serious issues involved, that is hardly something to complain about seriously.
The news of the whereabouts of the missing youth, who had been under arrest since 31st August, was immediately conveyed to the Foreign Office and the parents, and he was released on bail on 18th September. As the hon. Gentleman and the House know, there was a final court hearing, when a sentence of six months' imprisonment of a suspended character was imposed on 20th October, on which day Mrs. Balson and her son left Madrid for home.
Perhaps at this point I may take up the matter, raised very properly by the hon. Member on behalf of his constituents, about the cost of the telegrams involved in this matter. Where the services of the Foreign Office are required in matters of this sort it is the normal practice for the people involved to have to pay the cost of these messages, but in the special circumstances of this case, and in view of the plea made by the hon. Member on behalf of his constituents, I should like to tell him that we have decided to waive the charges.
The criticism by the hon. Member is directed both at the Spanish Government and the Foreign Office. As the Foreign Secretary informed the House on 1st November, following our representations the Spanish Government tendered an apology for their failure to notify this arrest of a British subject in accordance with their obligations, and added an assurance that measures had been taken to prevent a recurrence. As the hon. Member pointed out, this is not the first time that the Spanish authorities have failed to notify the arrest of a British subject, but it is fair to say that in most cases they have promptly done so in accordance with the spirit and the letter of the Anglo-Spanish Consular Convention. I am confident that following this incident the Spanish authorities intend to fulfil their obligations under the Consular Convention.
I hardly need to say that the Government will keep a close watch on these matters in Spain as elsewhere where we have consular conventions, and I need hardly add that the spectacle of an immature and entirely harmless tourist being solemnly charged, tried and sentenced for


a few words uttered in the heat of the moment is repugnant to people in this country, with our traditions of free speech, as well as—as the hon. Member said—being a matter that would not have been the cause for any legal action under the laws of this country.
I now turn to the Foreign Office's part in this incident. The disappearance of John Balson, unfortunate though it undoubtedly was, must be seen in perspective. In Britain today there are estimated to be 175,000 missing persons. In the summer period 100 persons per month on holiday abroad are reported missing to the Foreign Office and, faced with this situation, the Foreign Office and their consulates have to concentrate their energies on the many cases of fatal or grave injury or illness among people on holiday and the Department has to convey news of sudden death to the next of kin in this country and to advise on the funeral arrangements with foreign countries.
During the past season about 150 such fatalities have been notified and assistance sought in France and Spain alone, apart from other countries. They have many tourists from Britain. Sometimes the victims of accidents and persons afflicted by mental illness have to be accompanied on their return journey to this country. British subjects who are imprisoned always need advice, and relatives have to be consulted. If the accused cannot afford to pay for his defence the Consul tries to arrange for free legal aid wherever possible. The Foreign Office may have to organise an urgent search for lost climbers in the mountains, or for overdue yachtsmen.
The larger the number of travellers the greater the number of accidents, and if there are some complaints and some mistakes, as there are bound to be in these circumstances, there are also many letters of thanks. The hon. Member may be interested to know that during this summer in Madrid alone there have been 27 warm letters of thanks from people who received help from our Consulate in that city. In addition to this, distressed British subjects in great numbers apply for repatriation at public expense. These cause a great deal of work for the members of our posts abroad. Last year 3,100

people applied for repatriation. The number of people applying for repatriation is becoming something of a scandal with some of our Consulates, and has choked them up to the detriment of more urgent and serious cases that do occur.
Earlier this summer the Government introduced new measures to prevent the abuse of these arrangements, and they appear to have had some success already, in that the number of repatriation cases this summer is running at about one-third less than it was last year. The point is that the small section of the Consular Department in London which is responsible for France and Spain deals in the course of the tourist season with a startlingly large toll of real disasters, as well as with an even greater number of less serious inquiries—although every inquiry that is made, as we well understand, seems extremely serious to the person making it. Inevitably, we have to give priority to those cases which we think are of the greatest gravity and seriousness—

Sir Richard Glyn: The hon. Gentleman talks about real disasters. Would he accept from me that this is a complete disaster for the whole Balson family, whose finances are now prejudiced? For a very considerable period this was a disaster and it is one—a real disaster.

Mr. Thomson: When it was discovered that John Balson was lying in a Spanish gaol in contravention of the Consular Convention, at that point we knew that the tragedy had occurred and at that point I think that every possible action was taken by the Foreign Office.
However, the point which I want to make to the hon. Member and press on him is that, before that—during the earlier period he described—against the total demands on our posts overseas and our Consular Department in London, I do not think that the House would expect us to give immediately the highest priority to the search for a 17-year-old youth who had been missing—in the circumstances of this case as known at that time —for a week or 10 days. The House would be surprised how often Foreign Office records show that people much older than John Balson and with family and other responsibilities cause a good deal of anxiety and expense to their


families by their neglect to send word of a change of route or timetable.
As the hon. Member said, John Balson was not an inexperienced traveller. The fact that he went off alone to tour Western Europe and North Africa is a sign, I think, that he is of a self-reliant and adventurous character—the hon. Member will know his constituent and I do not—? but I think that it is reasonable also to assume that his parents in these circumstances accepted the risks of his holiday plans. The fact is—this is what I press on the hon. Member—that it is generally impracticable to trace anybody in the circumstances in which the present case began. It is literally like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
Frontier and police controls over movements of tourists these days are not so strict as they used to be and among the 4½ million British tourists who are travelling in the course of a year about the Continent there is small chance of finding any individual traveller unless the area of search is narrowly limited. This was not the case with John Balson, who, until we knew where he was, might have been anywhere in three countries. When the Foreign Office makes arrangements in an attempt to trace anybody, as it may well do after a reasonable lapse of time—and began to do in the case of John Balson on 9th September—inquiries seldom produce any results. We have to face this.
Another fact which raises problems in the Foreign Office is that the traveller quite often turns up, quite oblivious of all the trouble he has caused, and, often, the relatives who have called on the Foreign Office for assistance forget to tell us that he has turned up so that we can cease our injuiries. I think that the House is entitled to know the practical problems which we face when we are under criticism.
We are all glad that the grand tour of Europe which used to be the privilege of the wealthy few in another age is now something which is open to a wide range of young people who wish to travel as far as possible before settling down, as well as to many older people in modest circumstances. But the great majority of these tourists still go blithely abroad rather in the same spirit as they go off to Eastbourne or Brighton. The do so without giving serious thought to the risks of foreign travel, and these risks are real,

although only the unlucky minority get into trouble, fortunately.
The unwary traveller faces the risks of theft in a foreign country when there is a language barrier, as there was in this case, and where they are keeping to a touring timetable. Sickness and injury in a foreign country may bring not only physical suffering but—as the hon. Member knows in respect of his constituents— it may bring financial disaster.
I cannot emphasise too strongly that the prudent traveller should take out an ample insurance against these inevitable dangers. In addition, it should be remembered that, in some countries, offences to which our tolerant British society would pay scant attention bring down severe penalties on the offender, as happened, unfortunately, in this case.
The number of British tourists visiting France and Spain in a year has doubled and trebled, but economy and public expenditure, which I am sure the hon. Member would support, has prevented any corresponding increase in the same period in our consular establishments. The Consular Department of the Foreign Office receives some reinforcements in the tourist season, but the demands made upon them by the public in connection with deaths, grave accidents and other emergencies are far more than can be dealt with in our normal working hours. We are, therefore, entitled to some understanding when under the pressure of that kind of demand. Occasionally mistakes are made.
It is necessary that the Foreign Office and consular offices abroad should be ready to help our citizens when they are in real need of official protection or assistance, but their primary function, in and out of the tourist season, is to promote international trade and assist our traders abroad. They are not meant to be universal aunts or a free national help service, as I am afraid some visitors overseas sometimes think they are. I am not, of course, commenting on the hon. Gentleman's constituent's case but on the general problem, of which this case was a particularly difficult example.
I believe that the House will consider, as I do, that in present economic circumstances it would be wrong to divert scarce public money and even scarcer


diplomatic manpower for the purpose of helping tourists in ever-growing numbers to cope with the risk of foreign travel, of which they should to a large extent be aware or be able to discover for themselves and be able to look after themselves. In view of these limitations on manpower and finance, I submit to the hon. Gentleman that the practice of the Foreign Office in regard to missing persons is just about right.
No Government can protect all its citizens against the hazards they may meet when travelling abroad. British travellers abroad should, in their own interests, insure against mishaps and use good sense when they travel. It is for parents to consider the risks involved in relation to the age of a boy or girl or the conditions that may be expected on the route that is chosen before allowing teenage sons or daughters to travel alone or to travel on a shoestring, as it were. If this were done universally consular offices would be free to devote their services to those in real distress—and in any case, a traveller who is in distress should telegraph or telephone without delay.
Hon. Members who are properly anxious to protect and help their constituents should know—and I welcome this opportunity to say this to the House frankly—that the Foreign Office only in exceptional cases can effectively trace missing persons. The consular offices will continue to render all possible assistance to citizens of this country who are in difficulty.
The hon. Gentleman complained that he had not been adequately treated by

Foreign Office Ministers and had not been supplied with the explanation which he required. I understand that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State offered to show the hon. Gentleman the full report which he had in his possession, but that we have received no reply from the hon. Gentleman since then. However, no doubt he felt that this was a more adequate method of raising the subject, and it certainly satisfies us very well.

Sir Richard Glyn: This Adjournment debate had already been arranged, so that it did not seem appropriate to do other than have this debate.

Mr. Thomson: I did not know about that. The hon. Gentleman mentioned that in an earlier letter my right hon. Friend had said that he was not entirely satisfied with the arrangements. Since writing that letter my right hon. Friend has investigated the sad case of John Balson thoroughly critically and personally. He is convinced that the Foreign Office could not reasonably be expected to have done more in the matter to trace him. The moment it was known that the Consular Convention had been broken, all the resources of the Embassy were concentrated on helping and making representations to the Spanish authorities. I think it is fair to say that these efforts produced results and I am sure that this is the right scale of priorities to operate in these difficult matters—or the only scale of priorities practicable in this modern age of mass tourism.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Four o'clock.